Nominees for the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards are selected from suggestions by horror fans, pros and enthusiasts offered all year at the Classic Horror Film Board. Each year’s nominees are finalized by classic horror fan David Colton, with the help of more than 20 classic horror fans from around the world, and with expertise in all parts of fandom.
The year’s worth of columns by frequent File 770 contributor James H. Burns are up for a nomination for the Rondo Awards in the category of Best Column. Also, his File 770 essay, “The Geography of Eden,” is up for Best Article.
Actress Caity Lotz, who plays White Canary. Photo by Michael Buckner.
By James H. Burns: If you’re of a certain age, it’s rather extraordinary to discover that a new super hero TV series, one on at 8:00 p.m. and aimed, to some extent, at kids, features a super heroine, who’s also a lesbian…
Or who at least has Sapphic tendencies, as White Canary shows, in the first episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow on the CW.
Which somehow reminds me:
Did I ever tell you about what made me support gay marriage?
Science fiction, at least incidentally, held a strong role…
I was certainly never against gay marriage. I just kind of fell into that stand-up comedian’s line about why would anybody want to bother? But as my closest gay friends today have pointed out to me, while it may have been disappointing to them that I wasn’t an activist on this particular issue, I also recognized that ultimately, it wasn’t really my business what people wanted to do, as long as it only involved themselves, and no harm…
A stance I’ve held on many social situations!
But then, some years ago…
I have the perhaps unusual habit, at times, of checking out what happened to old friends, by using the internet. Before Face Book, a Google search could present some surprising, and often pleasing results.
One night, late, I looked up a young woman I had kind of sort of dated, back when I was a teen.
She was brilliant, and a beauty. An Upper West Side of Manhattan kid who, oddly enough, I had met at a Lunacon, the New York Science Fiction Convention. She looked like an even prettier, and far sexier version of Jodie Foster. We automatically took to each other. But she thought I was older, as most folks did back then… And when I told her the truth, that I was fourteen… Well, to a sixteen year old, that made all the difference in the world!
I thought…
We had a get-together, or two: one, at a Chinese restaurant recommended to me by the late Duffy Vohland, an editor at the time up at Marvel Comics, and — coincidental to this story — one of my first close, gay friends. Afterwards, the young lady and I went over to the park near Gracie Mansion. As we talked, I rued the fact that she was bugged by what I perceived was the age factor… She said it wasn’t that, but that she had a secret.
A secret she wasn’t ready to tell me yet.
We’d talk on the phone occasionally, and she tried to begin a correspondence, when she soon went off to college; Vassar, I think. (That summer, I believe, she was also in a summer stock theatre program, one that co-featured Chris Elliot!)
But my ego led me, unfortunately, over being what I perceived as being turned down, to let the friendship pass.
Thirty years later, I discovered that the native New Yorker had moved to Vermont.
Because she had developed a fatal cancer, in her forties, and before she died, she wanted to marry her life partner.
(I cried for more than a few moments. My last image of my friend had been with a smile on her face, framed by the trees, as the summer sun danced.)
It hit me rather simply, That if two people were in love, and a particularly young one was dying, she shouldn’t have to leave her home, in her final days, to gain one of her final wishes.
I still think the road to all this could have been made much simpler, twenty years ago, by adopting a “roommates law,” one which gave anybody the right to assign a “partner,” to help any legal, financial or medical issues.
(Intriguingly, I know older straight roommates of many years, now in their sixties or seventies (some of whom have been long-time members of fandom), who could conceivably face all the same sorts of hospital visitation and other rule obstacles, if one of them gets in trouble–the identical problems that once could beset gay couples.) Such a co-habitation law would have removed the politics from the gay marriage scenario, and possibly paved an easier path to its realization.
But ultimately, of course, who is anybody to stand in the way of someone’s happiness?
By James H. Burns: One Sunday afternoon, at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, at one of Fred Greenberg’s erstwhile comic book marketplaces, the once-a-month comic book shows that took over from the late Phil Seuling’s “Second Sunday” events, I met a lovely young lady.
In the late 1980s, it was still rare to see women at comic book conventions, particularly “dealers’ room only” get-togethers.
If you saw a young lady, usually she was someone’s sister, or daughter, wife or girlfriend.
As in this case!
I was behind a dealer’s table when we met, and we chatted amiably.
About an hour later, she came walking by, and threw something at me…
It was a wadded up piece of paper.
“Well, that’s very nice,” I said.
“Open it!” she replied.
It was her phone number.
I was on a several-week break-up from my own girlfriend; this gal was just on a second date with someone, so I did give her a holler.
She was petite, and had a Carly Simon look (not unusual, intriguingly, for those years in New York), and was a perfectly nice, bright and funny person. We dated briefly, and remained friends.
But I was astonished, just a few years later.
Someone gave me a copy of the 1965 Hammer film, She, an adaptation of H. Rider Haggard’s fantasy-adventure novel about a lost kingdom, and its matriarch. (The film starred Ursula Andress, John Richardson, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee.) Early in the picture, heroes Leo Vincey and Major Holly unknowingly meet a member of Queen Ayesha’s “tribe,” while in an Israeli cafe.
Rosenda Monteros portrayed Ustane, and she was stunning and had a particularly winsome charm.
She also could have been the sister of the gal I met in New York City.
Perhaps the reason I was instantly attracted to the latter, was that the image of Ustane had been locked in my mind since I was a boy, and saw She in the late 1960s!
Rosenda Monteros as Ustane
Flash back again with me, if you you will, to the Autumn of 1967, when ABC premiered a new Friday night hour-long series from MGM, which has now largely been forgotten, called Off To See The Wizard. It was an anthology series featuring titles from the studio’s catalog that could be considered family viewing.
Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion and Flipper were two of the bigger movies shown on the series, which usually split its offerings into two separate installments. (Genre-related titles of interest included Captain Sinbad, The Glass Slipper, Island of the Lost, Mike and the Mermaid, Tarzan the Ape Man, and What Ever Happened To Mother Goose (aka Who’s Afraid of Mother Goose?) William Shatner’s pilot for an Alexander the Great television series, shot in late 1963, was also finally broadcast, co-starring Adam West as his best friend (along with Simon Oakland), and “guest-starring” Joseph Cotten and John Cassavettes… (Had an Alexander series begun airing in 1964, starring Shatner and West, the course of 1960s pop culture might have been vastly altered!)
In late October, Off To See The Wizard also presented Lili, the charming 1953 movie, with some fantasy overtones, starring Leslie Caron, Mel Ferrer, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Kurt Kaszner.
Lili, which takes place at a circus in a small French town was actually based on a very different tale by the popular sports-writer turned fiction author, Paul Gallico, about a misanthropic, if successful, television puppeteer in New York, entitled “The Man Who Hated People.” (Gallico’s short story originally appeared in The Saturday Evening Post). Helen Deutsch’s screenplay adaptation later served as the basis for the Broadway musical Carnival!, in 1961. But oddly, nowhere in the credits of the original cast album, or some other material related to the play–presented by legendary Broadway impresario David Merrick (and with a script by Michael Stewart, and music and lyrics by Bob Merrill, for director Gower Champion) — is Gallico’s name….
Paul Gallico in 1929.
The “Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo” song sequence, in which Caron communicates with Mel Ferrer’s puppets just beyond their simple stage, stayed with me throughout my childhood, as it had for so many who saw the movie, a generation earlier!
But I was absolutely stunned, twelve years ago, when I finally caught up with the movie again, and discovered that some part of the picture had always lived within my subconscious. Because the styles worn by some of the film’s male cast I realized, had influenced elements of my own fashion sense, as a young man!
….All of which goes to prove that the films and television we show our youngsters are of importance. There is no telling how, or when, they may continue to live in mind!
By James H. Burns: I was raised in a home where Martin Luther King was a respected leader, and Muhammad Ali was one of the few sports heroes my Dad had as an adult.
So when I saw some of the African-ethnic stereotypes in George Pal’s Puppetoons, or other shorts and films from the 1930s, and afterwards, they had no perceptible negative effect on me. My parents were raising me to believe that all people were created equal.
It is still, of course, completely understandable how some people could find some of the imagery offensive.
And it is extraordinary to think that these shorts were being shown on local childrens’ TV during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.
But it’s a particular tragedy, because the Puppetoons, cartoon-length shorts featuring remarkable stop-motion animation, may have been the very best fantasy filmmaking George Pal was ever responsible for.
The success of Pal’s series at Paramount (also known as “George Pal’s Madcap Models”), led to his feature film-making career, as both a director and producer, including Destination Moon, War of the Worlds, When Worlds Collide, Tom Thumb, and The Time Machine; and such mainstream efforts as Houdini and The Naked Jungle.
Pal. a European emigrant, was heartbroken by the racist allegations against his early films. He regarded his character Jasper, a little boy who would be consistently conned by a talking scarecrow, to be on a par with Tom Sawyer, or other American fables. He created the extraordinary short, John Henry and the Inky Poo, to help show that he held nothing but respect for ALL cultures.
Most of the Pal shorts haven’t been shown for decades. Some of the wonderful compilations that have been produced usually omit the majority of the Puppetoons catalog.
The shorts could be presented to the modern audience, I believe, with explanatory context, in a program hosted perhaps by someone like Whoopi Goldberg, who as a New Yorker, I’m certain, also grew up with these films.
Why is any of this important?
Because the imagery in some of the Puppetoons remains some of the most astonishing fantasy milieus ever put on celluloid. Some of the shorts were nominated for Oscars, and other awards.
I grew up with these films early in the morning, in a half-hour that also included the old “Sing Along” cartoons, and Herge’s Adventures of Tin Tin.
As with The Little Rascals shorts that also ran on that era’s television, they filled me only with affection for ALL the different characters.
(Sociologists almost always miss the point that the kids who grew up with supposedly racist material, became the adults who marched along with Dr. King, or otherwise supported the cause of equality. Perhaps the greatest message of some of these films — despite offensive stereotypes in some instances — was the love the characters were most often depicted with, or shown having for each other.)
I was astonished this afternoon, to see the following short for the first time in nearly fifty years. As a child, it held me spellbound… And with all the scariness, the dreamlike visions, often viewed shortly after having just actually woken up, were mesmerizing…
The scenes, you’ll see, are like something out of a painting by Hannes Bok.
I’ve been in love with the better nature of this material since I was a boy, and wrote one of the only, or at least one of the first histories, of the Puppetoons back in the late 1970s, which included my interview with Pal, for FantasticFilms magazine (the predecessor to Filmfax).
A scene in “A Date With Duke,” starring Duke Ellington is to me, one of the most joyous expressions I’ve ever seen on film: moments which should become self-evident!
If these shorts are not objectionable, perhaps we can present more.
The George Pal Puppetoons are a chapter of fantasy filmmaking that perhaps again, in the 21st Century, can be safe, and wondrous, to view.
David was a fashion junkie. I know– I know exactly what you’re thinking. That a man who would wear paisley and pinstripes is not an example of sartorial sense. But wait. He collected haute couture pieces. Those jackets, terrifying ties, shirts, and trousers had been the height of fashion when it was produced.
He might spend years tracking one down. Often, he was wearing them in combinations that the designer had actually intended. When I saw him at conventions after that, we didn’t talk fiction. He would tell me the story behind whatever pieces he was wearing and talk about the designer and the theory behind why this particular combination had been fashionable in its day. He wasn’t buying clothes because they were tacky; he was buying them because he was enjoying this whole meta-conversation about fashion and taste.
(2) YOUR OWN SPACESHIP. SF Signal’s new Mind Meld, curated by Paul Weimer, poses these questions —
Q: Congratulations. You can take a trip on, or if you prefer, captaincy of, the spacecraft of your own choice from genre literature. The only catch is–it can’t be the Millennium Falcon or the Firefly. Rey and Mal refused to give up their ships. What spacecraft would you want to own, or travel on? Why?
The movie stars John Goodman, whose character is living in a bunker with what appears to be his family. There’s a nostalgic sheen to the setting, and it’s reminiscent of the hatch in the Abrams co-created TV show Lost. It’s unclear whether they’re stuck in the bunker because of what happens in Cloverfield, when a giant monster wreaks havoc on New York City. The movie is told through what is said to be found footage of the disaster.
A possible suggested solution? My suggestion actually would not impact on Hugo nominators and voters in any way! As far as they would be concerned they would carry on nominating and voting on the short-list in the usual way as if nothing had changed. But what would change would be the way the nominations were treated: both the series and the episode titles would be counted differently.
Here, with nominations, a nominator could nominated episodes from five separate series or, at the other end of the extreme, for five episodes from the same series, or any mix in-between just as nominators can do now. (And ‘yes’, I know that the nominating rules are about to change but for now I want to keep this simple.) The change would be in the way these nominations were counted. Nominators would get just one vote perseries they nominate. This means that if you voted for four episodes of Star Trek and one of Tripped then that would only count for one vote each for Star Trek and Tripped (two series votes — one for Star Trek and one for Tripped — even though four episodes of Star Trek were nominated). At this first nomination stage we would only be considering series (not episodes). In this specific way the series with the most votes would get on the short-list ballot with nominators effectively getting just one vote per series they nominate. Ignoring episode titles at this stage, and considering only series (be they TV or web series or even short films), would ensure that the ballot had on it a list of different series with no duplicates. In other words all the series on the ballot would reflect the numbers of people nominating series (and not, as is now, the numbers nominating different episodes of the same series).
Then, with the next stage of finalising the shortlist would come the individual episode part. At this stage we have just a list of series and an episode title needs to be associated with each. However some series may have had more than one episode nominated. Here, all those that nominated for series on the short-list would have their nominations for all their individual episode titles counted: again, one vote perepisode title. And so, to continue with our example, all our nominator’s four Star Trek episodes would all be counted and each episode title get one vote. Of all the nomination forms submitted, the individual episode with the most nominations for any single series is the one that gets on the ballot.
This would mean that the Hugo for Dramatic Presentation Short Form nominations would better reflect the diversity of televisual SF that exists with a range of different series always ending up being on the short-list final ballot and then with the most popular episode at the nomination stage associated with each one.
(5) KUSHNER REMEMBERS. So many fine reminiscences about David Hartwell are being posted. Here is an excerpt from Ellen Kushner’s:
I quit that job to write my first novel. When I finished Swordspoint, no one in the field would touch it but David. While my agent tried selling it mainstream, David said he would be there waiting (then at Arbor House) if that failed. I joked that it was just his revenge on me for quitting on him – to get me back in his clutches – but they were fine clutches to be in. He made sure my little ms. was read by the likes of Samuel R. Delany, and he proudly told me he was getting me a Thomas Canty cover, knowing that was my ultimate dream…
(6) DONATIONS REQUESTED. Kathryn Cramer, grateful for the care David Hartwell was given at a local hospital, asks people to make a contribution —
Though David was on a respirator for an extended period of time, Elizabethtown Community Hospital in Elizabethtown, NY does not have a mechanical respirator of its own. A wonderful nurse whose name I didn’t catch or have forgotten spent FIVE HOURS, yes FIVE FUCKING HOURS, compressing a blue rubber bulb that substituted for the action of David’s diaphragm. They took wonderful, compassionate care of him, and this is not a complaint about the service.
Rather, if you are thinking of David tonight and wish you could have done something, please follow THIS LINK http://www.ech.org/make-a-contribution.html and make a donation earmarked to buy ECH its own mechanical respirator.
ECH is a small, rural hospital. They do not own their own respirator. Rather, there is a shared one that travels from one facility to another.
David did not die for lack of a respirator. Nothing could have saved him. But please, as you think of him this evening, think not just of David, but of the matter of the nurse who was his lungs Tuesday night. I am deeply grateful to her. But what she did should not have been needed.
Based on my experience of the past few days, it is my considered opinion that NO HOSPITAL IN AMERICA SHOULD BE WITHOUT ITS OWN RESPIRATOR.
This is the 21st century. We can do this.
(7) IS COSPLAY IMPERILED? The lawsuit is about copyright protection for cheerleading uniforms, however, Public Knowledge in “Cosplay Goes to the Supreme Court”says the decision could have consequences for recreation costumers. Truth or clickbait?
Yes, you read that right: the Supreme Court of the United States may get to decide the legal status of all those Jedi robes you’ve got squirreled away. The Supreme Court is considering a case that will set the standard for when clothing and costume designs can be covered by copyright—and when people who mimic them (such as costumers) can be sued for potentially enormous damages.
The parties to the case, Star Athletica and Varsity Brands, both design cheerleading uniforms. Varsity claims that major portions of their designs are entitled to copyright protection, while Star Athletica points out (and is backed up by a long line of caselaw) that clothing designs are explicitly exempted from copyright. Their arguments rest on different interpretations of a legal concept known as “separability”—a topic so abstract and murky that even seasoned copyright lawyers avoid it.
To understand the case and its impact, you need to keep in mind two things. First, copyright protects creative works. It does not protect what it calls “useful articles,” or items which are designed purely for utility. Copyright protects a statue; it does not protect the chisel….
All of which brings us back to cosplay. If the Supreme Court decides on a test that gives a lot of leeway for “original” designers to sue others for infringing on the “look” of their clothing, costumers are left right in the crosshairs. And copyright damages can be positively massive, running up thousands of dollars per infringement. Public Knowledge will be filing in support of Star Athletica’s petition before the Supreme Court, highlighting the scope of hobbyists and consumers that the ruling could impact.
Hollywood loves reboots and prequels so much right now that they want them to make love and create preboots. Yes, preboots. Something to kickstart cash cows back into delivering that sweet sweet franchise milk. Prometheus is kind of a good preboot, X-Men: First Class was great, but Terminator: Genisys was the motion picture equivalent of Budnick holding onto your waist and spending your arcade cash (except more confusing). That’s probably why the sequel to the prequel reboot (presequeboot?) that was unfathomably titled Terminator 2, has been removed from Paramount’s release calendar.
Based around the Harlan Ellison short story of the same name, I Have no Mouth, and I Must Scream is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the last five humans are immortal and forever tortured by a supercomputer that wiped out humanity 109 years ago. You play as all five survivors as they confront the various psychological and physical tortures bestowed upon them by their sadistic, sentient captor.
You can play each chapter in any order and there are multiple endings available. You can also change the graphics and sound by choosing different audio and visual filters and new touch-based control inputs are available as well….
This time out Night Dive, who now owns the rights to the game, joined forces with mobile porting company DotEmu, who previously ported Another World: 20th Anniversary Edition, The Last Express and Double Dragon Trilogy.
I Have no Mouth, and I Must Scream costs £2.99 / $3.99 on iOS and Android.
Game play is reviewed in this video from Monsters of the Week by RagnarRox.
Trump, on the other hand, is so anomalous a figure that the GOP establishment can console themselves with the knowledge that he leads no faction. Even if he wins the nomination, Trump can be safely relegated to the category of a one-off, a freak mutation, never to be repeated. Trump would be like the character The Mule, in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels. In the schema of Asimov’s far future science-fiction series, The Mule is a galactic conquerer who throws history off the course that it was expected to take, but the changes he introduces are ultimately minor because he has no successor.
(11) TODAY IN HISTORY
January 21, 1789 – The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy, is published in Boston. (Apparently it wasn’t banned in Boston – think how much that would have helped sales.)
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
Born January 21, 1938 – Robert “Wolfman Jack” Smith. My friend, “Imponderables” author David Feldman, ran Wolfman Jack’s campaign for president, once upon a time.
(13) LOCAL FOSSIL MAKES GOOD. I’m a bit skeptical about the idea of a “Welsh dinosaur” – especially one that avoided being turned into coal. But the BBC feels perfectly comfortable writing headlines like “Welsh dinosaur named ‘dragon thief’”.
A 201-million-year-old dinosaur that fell out of a cliff face at Penarth in South Wales in 2014 has been formally named as Dracoraptor hanigani.
Loosely translated, the Dracoraptor part means “dragon thief”; hanigani honours Rob and Nick Hanigan – the two fossil-hunting brothers who found it.
In a new analysis, scientists say the specimen is possibly the oldest known Jurassic dinosaur from the UK.
(15) OTHER MONKEY BUSINESS. The very last thing in Eric Robert Nolan’s “Throwback Thursday: Weird 1970’s ‘Planet of the Apes’ merchandise” is a book cover identifying Jerry Pournelle as the author of the novelization Escape From The Planet of the Apes. How did we forget that?
Finally, pictured below is a novelization of one of the movie’s sequels, “Escape From the Planet of the Apes” (1971). I think I saw this among the disheveled paperback library that always occupied the back seat and back floor of my Dad’s car. I saw Boulle’s source novel in that back seat once, with a weird minimalist art cover. My Dad explained that it was “very different from the movie.” Or I might have seen it on the floor of the closet I shared with my brother. (That closet functioned according to trickle-down economics — the really cool stuff occasionally fell from his top shelf to the floor where I could grab it.)
(16) A LITTLE LIST. No, I am not going to be linking to many more of these, or really, any more of these, but I laughed when I saw Luther M. Siler’s headline – “Oh, why not: #Hugo awards eligibility post”.
Rumor has it that Hugo nominations are going to open up next week, and I have two– count ’em, two! different works that will be eligible for nomination.
(Yes, indie authors are eligible. I checked.)
(17) ASPIRING SPACE TAILOR. Adam Savage has been talking recently about his desire to make one of the spacesuits from The Martian to add to his costume collection. And he convinced Fox to loan him one to take a look at first.
At the men’s shows in Milan last week, astronauts appeared almost as often on the catwalk as the inevitable Bowie tributes. Versace produced a show dedicated, as Donatella said, to the future. The mood – all shiny white plastic – felt very 2001 (the film, not the year), especially when the show began with models running around the darkened catwalk in bright fibre-optic outfits, like those training for a mission. When the lights went up, Versace’s idea of an astronaut was earthbound, slick and boardroom-ready, probably with important financial reports rather than space food in his backpack-cum-jetpack. He wore a silver mac, or chunky bright white trousers and matching biker jackets, a bit like the fashion version of Buzz Lightyear’s outfit. A cropped leather jacket with Versace’s version of Nasa badges was another highlight of haute astronaut style.
One outfit in the accompanying photos has enough decorative pins on it to be Radch haut-couture.
And after you read the comic, you’ll understand why it makes me think of this routine by Lily Singh –
[Thanks to Alan Baumler, Will R., Glenn Hauman, Lorcan Nagle, James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day IanP.]
By James H. Burns: I’ve thanked Mike privately, many times, for the opportunity to appear here in “the pages” of File 770.
One of the greatest gifts a writer can receive is simply the knowledge that there’s a home for his thoughts.
To be sure, what I like to call my “memory pieces”, began about seven years ago, when it finally dawned on me, after a slow realization, that there were some elements of our shared past that hadn’t particularly been denoted, anywhere.
I decided it was time to begin “recording” them, before the day may come — God forbid — when I no longer remembered quite as well.
A trap memory can also be a blessing!
Mike was kind enough to begin plugging some of these articles, and somewhere along the way, with this tacit encouragement of acceptance, I simply began sending some of these pieces to him.
But when a notion comes to me, what helps most seeing it through fruition is the knowledge that File 770 will give it a showcase.
(Among the most fun, in a way, have been the actor tributes, quick slices of their impact, I hope, presented here with a lovely array of photos that I work hard to assemble, and that Mike always does a fantastic job of presenting.)
(But then, it’s also been particularly joyous to have a place to forward what I hope are interesting tidbits of space and technology news, and even intriguing invitations…!)
I’ve been friends with editors before. But Mike is the first one who has given me the boon of a welcome forum!
Slowly, too, has been my finally starting to write about my own history, nearly forty years now as a writer, and sometimes actor, among other media professions, starting when I was thirteen, in our very mutual worlds of science fiction and fantasy…
Mike is also an excellent editor, pointing out the occasions when a piece may not necessarily have been what I intended.
I had heard of File 770, of course, ages before Mike and I ever “met” online. How could I not have? Mike has, of course, won several Hugos.
But Mike may be surprised to discover that I ordered an issue from him back in the late 1990s, when I began, slowly, reacquainting myself again with science fiction fandom.
I was impressed then, as I continue to be now, by the variety and range of what File 770 features.
(Although, I must admit, I will never get this “Sad Puppies” thing…) It should come as no surprise, of course, after all these years of such valued contributions to this field, the number of friends that Mike has gathered, in this vast audience.
Because one of the very best things about being involved here, is getting to “know” so many of the readership, as well.
By James H. Burns: Remarkably, Mike, today is the 50th anniversary of when the Batman television series debuted on ABC-TV….
(At 7:30 Eastern, I mean, “Bat-Time,” old chum.)
And the world of pop culture, of course, would never quite be the same!
I wasn’t even four yet.
It was some weeks before I caught up with the series. My first episode was Cat-Woman’s debut on the series, “The Purr-Fect Crime.”
Soon, like millions of other kids across America, I was dressing up as Batman (as well as pretending to be a legion of other super-heroes, my imagination further fired up by the following Autumn’s premiere of The Marvel Super Heroes, a daily syndicated animated series, as well as by watching the George Reeves Superman television show, in repeats). I used to have a photo of myself, from that era, dressed as Batman, standing in the living room, lecturing my family on crime prevention…
Within months, I was even inventing my own super hero characters, “drawing” comic books on single sheets of small paper that I would then staple together…
Here are some words from a column I wrote a few years ago, edited, reflecting on those halcyon days!
One afternoon, when I was about four, I was transfixed in front of the television set. There was no cartoon on, or sitcom, but an afternoon TV newscast. It wasn’t even a broadcast, but a newsread, with just a station logo on the screen. An aunt babysitting me wondered what a tot was doing, devoted to the news. Now I hadn’t suddenly become a budding journalist. I actually remember, oddly, that I was blowing off an episode of Astro Boy.
Somehow I had caught the announcer doing a story on how Batman, in the form of Adam West, had visited our real New York City Hall, and Mayor Lindsay, or someone (not Mayor Lindseed of the TV series’ Gotham), had given him some proclamation. I kept watching, hoping there might be a film clip of my fave, being honored.
Some time before, or maybe later, I had been roundly disappointed, when my family went to a local movie theatre waiting to see Adam West make a personal appearance, to promote the Batman feature film. With about 1000 other folks crowding the parking lot, we were stunned when neither the Batmobile, nor the actor, ever showed. It might have been my first lesson in being on the wrong end of a promotion gone bad. It wouldn’t be until years later that I learned that the sort of hard-to-believe, hard-now-to-remember Beatlemania kind of fervor that surrounded the first season of the Batman TV show, which debuted in January of 1966, had resulted in what was supposed to be West’s schedule that day totally going up in a cloud of bat-smoke.
It can be neat as a child, when while some part of you may know that your favorite heroes aren’t real, you might quite not be sure. (One of my friends, Thomas V. Powers, who used to work in television news, likes to tell the story of how when a boy, he would put on his Batman cowl, and patrol his New York City block on tricycle, “protecting the citizens of his neighborhood”.)
Nor is the wonderful frisson that can come when seeing a childhood hero necessarily limited to one’s youngest years. My Dad, for his entire life, remembered the thrill he had, when as a teenager, in the early’40s, he saw Roy Rogers exiting Manhattan’s Statler Hilton Hotel, in full western regalia, making his way over to the rodeo.
And some things do indeed come around.
Almost exactly twenty years after I was chagrined in the suburbs, I was a guest speaker at a comic book convention, in Manhattan. Adam West was also a guest. As my girlfriend and I sat in the audience, we couldn’t believe the excitement we felt, as that old Batman theme music poured from the sound system, and West came on stage. West, as many of you know, is absolutely charming and (as also represented in the book), a terrific raconteur on that special chapter of pop culture history.
Some fascinations, happily, never quite entirely go away.
By James H. Burns: The alcoholic has always understood science fiction —
Or some of the basic tenets of it, anyway.
Or perhaps I should say that “the barfly” can perceive elements of the genre… Whether he or she knows it.
The classic neighborhood bar has become a dying thing in many areas of New York. The wood-floored, huge countered environs used to be a fixture within every few miles of many towns, The positive element was that it gave folks a room to gather. And if one suddenly felt the need to be around people, you could always pop in for a quick beer, or even a soda.
Drunk driving laws have wiped most of these places out, customers not willing to risk arrest or the confiscation of their car, just for the sake of imbibing. (In many states, you can be arrested when you’re legally sober, if the police officer decides you qualify for a “DUI,” driving under the influence, after having a wine or two, or some such.)
But through the windows of the few surviving saloons, you can still see men, and — far more rarely –women, first thing in the afternoon and some times, even more sadly, the morning; and at any moment in the night.
It’s a life where from the singularity of a barstool, the tenants seem to exist almost in a quantum bubble.
The world proceeds — glimpsed on a soundless TV, or seen in the pages of that day’s soon well-worn newspaper — but observation and occurrence, and the very quality of light, appear to remain unchanged.
I’ll run into acquaintances I first met decades ago, on what have become my rare forays into my old town’s taverns, who have never really left the bar.
Often, such habitual inn men are not the loud or ridiculous drunks of myth. They tend to be, in my experience, another stereotype, the quiet drinker who might very well have an interesting story to tell….
They’ve found an escape from life, to be sure. Some of the patrons feel that they have no place else to go. And friendships can indeed be made, among the gathered. In some instances, bartenders have been called in to identify a customer’s corpse, as the only person the coroner can find who knew the deceased..
There’s nothing particular poetic, generally, about these places; simply the illusion that everything has stayed the same within the four walls of inebriation.
And yet, if existence is reality… It’s occurred to me that the physicists who study the possibilities of parallel dimensions and other theoretical wrinkles in the universe, might do well to ponder those who seem to stand on the borderlines of time.
Many of us are attracted to the abiding nature of certain locales. In my case, the beach, or a ballpark, or a handful of favorite restaurants, and yes — indeed!–a bar or two… (It should not be forgotten that grand and glorious times can be had in any venue, if the moments and people are right!)
Certainly, readers of books and stories, in whatever category, also find some kind of release in the words they peruse. Yet, I have to believe, as so many have commented on far more eloquently, that most any kind of narrative has the ability, or at least potential, to enrich its audience.
(What kind of lives would any of these drinkers have had, if they had only been drawn to the better lure of books?)
Taverns, of course, have also held a storied role in the creation of many words, and worlds.
There have been more than a handful of authors who have found bars a welcome place to write, somewhere in a corner, late at night. (Although one friend I knew, years ago, preferred penning his column in the midst of a crowded counter, writing in longhand in an era well before any kind of electronic tablet.)
Coffee shops and diners, to some extent, offered an alternative to those who wished to create with people nearby. But these locales didn’t tend to offer quite the comparable mix of a saloon’s semblance of solitude, with companionship.
Such eateries — at least of the all-night variety — also seem to have diminished. Starbucks, I’m certain, may have filled this void for those seeking a seat and camaraderie (if even from a distance), but most of those venues rarely stay open past nine or ten, or eleven on weekends….
More and more, our world has left us with few too potentially merry places to gather, save for the internet….
I’ve sometimes wondered if our society encompassed what our future was supposed to be by now: cities in space and on the moon; colonies on Mars; more diseases vanquished; a better peace throughout the globe — if there would be far fewer of the truly lost, in so many ways.
It’s the salient dreamers who will help, as always, to point the way to a kinder path.
Even as some hopes may wane or evolve, it’s hard to imagine as many people locked in their own private miasmas, chronic wanderers, once the future finally catches up…
Will there be taverns in space?
(From Gavagan’s to Callahan’s, to one even named for the White Hart?)
If we’re fortunate!
…But filled only with those looking to share a conversation, and some smiles, and the beliefs of all our better days.
It is difficult, after all, to imagine “The Iceman Cometh,” on Enceladus.
The Hong Kong-based interior design firm arranged angular blocks in different sizes and materials to create the impression that a huge explosion had taken place in the space.
…Lung says that the idea was to create a space that feels like it could be from a science-fiction film.
The sci-fi series Total Recall 2070 was Canadian-German co-production that, in theory, sounded wildly ambitious. It drew inspiration from not just one, but two of the most successful Philip K. Dick movie adaptations. Similar to Paul Verhoeven’s darkly humorous blockbuster Total Recall, the story revolved around modified memories and took place on a futuristic version of Earth as well as the newly-colonized Mars. But Total Recall 2070 also followed policemen hunting renegade androids in a neo-noir megalopolis akin to the one in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Philip K. Dick wasn’t mentioned in the show’s credits though, as the series barely resembled original stories these movies were based on.
Total Recall 2070 premiered on Canadian TV channel CHCH in January of 1999. It also aired on Showtime, where network executives toned down show’s violence, nudity and strong language considerably for an American audience. Total Recall 2070 aired for one 22-episode season before being canceled.
Unlike most of these other bombs, both characters in the #1 worst show have rebounded from failure and are currently quite popular.
I hear that Scott is in early negotiations on a deal to come aboard and directThe Prisoner, the screen version of the 1968 Patrick McGoohan British TV series. This has been a plum project at Universal for some time with numerous A-list scribes including Christopher McQuarrie writing drafts. The most recent version was by The Departed scribe William Monahan. The film is being produced by Bluegrass Films Scott Stuber and Dylan Clark. Scott’s Scott Free team will likely become part of it as they get the script that makes the director happy.
Drama Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency has been picked up straight to series with an eight-episode order, the cable network announced Friday ahead of its time at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour.
Based on Douglas Adams’ graphic novels first published in 1987, the story centers on the titular holistic detective who investigates cases involving the supernatural. Chronicle‘s Max Landis will pen the series, which is a co-production between AMC Studios, Ideate Media and comics powerhouse IDW Entertainment as well as Circle of Confusion (The Walking Dead).
Bruce the shark, the famous seafaring predator from Jaws, has found a new home at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ museum.
The Academy announced Thursday that a full-scale model of the shark, the last surviving one from the 1975 movie, has been donated to the museum by Nathan Adlen. During filming of Jaws, director Steven Spielberg nicknamed the shark Bruce after his lawyer Bruce Ramer.
The Fiberglas model is the fourth and final version made from the original mold. Created for display at the Universal Studios Hollywood at the time of the film’s release, the prop remained a popular backdrop for photos until 1990, when it was moved to the yard of Aadlen Brothers Auto Wrecking, a firm in Sun Valley, Calif., that regularly bought or hauled used vehicles from Universal Studios. With the business slated to close this month, owner Nathan Adlen is giving the historic prop to the Academy Museum, which is set to open in 2018.
(6) IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR. Jo Lindsay Walton’s “My favorite looks back at 2015 of 2015” is a compilation of links to around 30 different writers’ year-end posts.
Come home 2015, you’re drunk. Please come home. We need you. We need you.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
Born January 8, 1926 — Kerwin Mathews. James H. Burns paid tribute to the actor, who passed away in 2007, in a File 770 post.
Mathews, of course, was the star of two Ray Harryhausen fantasy movies,The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Gulliver’s Travels, as well as the similarly-themed Jack the Giant Killer (the latter, one of my all-time favorite fantasy films, in fact!).
Mathews was a classic leading man, who had the unusual ability — still too easily overlooked when contemplating actors — to be believable in the wildest of celluloid special effects situations.
It’s a boy! It’s a Roy! For Blade Runner fans, 8 January 2016 is a date of major significance. It’s the “day of activation” for Roy Batty, one of the most charismatic and significant characters in this landmark movie. He’s a replicant, or android – and, although he might not be flesh and blood, he certainly makes us think about what it is to be human. He’s arguably the heart and soul of the movie, even more than its putative hero, played by Harrison Ford
Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott, is one of the most influential films of the 1980s, a philosophical science fiction-action work set in the near future that’s steeped in a sense of the past, a reflection on memory, identity, emotion, creation and invention that takes place in a dazzling yet downbeat neo-noir urban landscape. Loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, its events begin to unfold in November 2019, in a world in which highly realistic androids, known as replicants, have been built by a company called the Tyrell Corporation.
Batty (brilliantly played by Rutger Hauer) is a replicant from the Nexus-6 class, and he’s looking for answers to questions about his own past and future: how he was made, and how he can prolong his life and that of his Nexus-6 comrades. Ford plays a character called Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter. His job is to hunt down and kill replicants, who are illegal on Earth.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BLOGS
Born January 8, 2007 – The Book Smugglers. And they know how to celebrate – by publishing a book!
…And a brand new anthology: Tales of First Contact collects the five short stories from our First Contact series and is available now from your retailer of choice. Or you know, via a review copy – all you have to do is ask. We are also happy to offer giveaway copies – just let us know.
Like most of us in our own lives, each of these characters has a limited understanding of the universe, and especially of the past. What do other worlds look like? What was “the Galactic Empire” really? Is the Force real, and if so how does it work? Nowhere is this difference in understanding illustrated better than in how these characters view Han Solo: For Ren, he’s an uncaring father, for Finn, he’s a brilliant war hero, and for Rey he’s a legendary smuggler. Each finds their understanding challenged by a more complicated truth: Han was an absent dad because he cared so much; the great Rebellion war hero is a scoundrel without a plan…
But some time between fifth grade and now, I’ve come to recognize that while Star Trek: The Next Generation holds a special place in my heart, it is not the best incarnation of Star Trek. That title belongs to what writer Ronald D. Moore called Next Generation’s “bastard stepchild,” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Deep Space Nine is a remarkable show. It is unfairly overlooked as one of the foundational programs (like Buffy, The Sopranos, and Hill Street Blues) of our current golden age of television. DS9 introduced long, serialized stories about morally ambiguous characters to network television ten years before Battlestar Galactica, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones.
John King Tarpinian has little to say about the remake, but he remembers the year the original version came out:
When the original movie was in theaters my parents decided that summer vacation would be on Catalina Island. Being parents they decided the best place for a kid to be on the island was inland at a resort with a pool so he could go swimming…but I digress. One of the guests at the hotel was a Mr. Goff, who was some sort of designer of the sets. The thing I remember that impressed my parent was he also worked on an old black and white movie, Casablanca.
(13) LEVERAGING YOUR WORK. Luna Lindsey at the SFWA Blog has an impressive, multilayered strategy for “Tackling the Dreaded Bio” – a writing chore that’s not as simple as it looks.
What a Bio Accomplishes
Bios seem like such a chore, perhaps because we think of them as an obnoxious necessity rather than an opportunity. As writers, we also tend to dislike telling our own stories. And that’s exactly what a bio does.
When a reader bothers to check the bio, it’s because your story (or blog post, or appearance on a panel) has captured their interest. They want to know more and that’s awesome! A catchy bio will help them remember you, and they may even be inspired to seek out your other creations. That’s exactly what you want. Your bio will propel them into your other worlds. So make it good!
(14) AGAIN AND AGAIN. A Radio Times video identifies “18 actors who have travelled between the universes of Harry Potter and Doctor Who.”(This was posted a year ago. Have there been any more crossovers since then?)
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Alan Baumler, James H. Burns, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]
(1) WOMEN WITHOUT NOMINATIONS. A fully-illustrated protest, “The International Festival of Comics (Angoulême): Women Banned from Comics”, can be viewed at More Words, Deeper Hole.
With the announcement today of the list of nominations for the Grand Prix d’Angoulême 2015 – an award for which we comics creators are asked to vote – the ax fell:
30 names, 0 women.
The creators of the protest called for a voting boycott.
Maybe it’s missing something in translation — I read it both ways but my French is pretty bad — but that may be the most obnoxious and angry statement I’ve ever read from an official party in a comics milieu. I won’t be going over it again in detail, I don’t think — life’s too short, and it made me a bit ill. There’s a bunch of stuff in there that’s patently not true, though, including bellowing at made-up accusations at the fringes of what’s being discussed, a standard of working cartoonist applied here that hasn’t been applied to past presidents like Watterson or even their current one. There are also, and this is where my French may fail me, one or two extraneous digs at people. Sheesh.
In response to fan outcry that the board game doesn’t feature Rey, the lead character played by Daisy Ridley in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the toymaker announced Tuesday that she will be added in an updated version.
“We love the passion fans have for Rey, and are happy to announce that we will be making a running change to include her in the Monopoly: Star Wars game available later this year,” a Hasbro spokesperson said in a statement to EW.
(3) TESTIMONIALS. A post from Mary Robinette Kowal quotes from the requests sent by 83 of the 100 people she and other donors gave supporting memberships in the 2015 Worldcon.
Mark-kitteh says, “I noted that there are several that seem to identify as puppy-sympathetic in some fashion; there are of course others that are anti-slate and many that don’t mention the kerfluffle in any way. (In true clickbait fashion, I will say that You Won’t Believe How Eloquent #5 Is!)”
The United States isn’t the only country releasing Star Trek stamps.
Two other countries, Palau and Guyana, have released stamps based on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
The stamps from Palau feature Deep Space Nine ships including the Defiant, the space station itself, a runabout, a Cardassian Galor-class ship, and a Bajoran solar sail ship.
This has been the worst year of my life. So bad I thought I would die, over and over. But then wonderful things happened. Things that will change me forever. And nobody really knew because I practiced my own daily practice throughout. I say this not because I want sympathy. I say it because I’m proud. …
SURRENDER TO THE MOMENT
I am always anxious about the future. Or I regret the past. It’s hard not to regret losing lifetimes worth of money.
It’s hard not to feel anxious about the future for me, my family, my loved ones, my friends, because everything is so frustratingly uncertain.
But recognize when those worries come up, and bring it back to right now. What can I do now to best serve the cards dealt me this moment?
Anxiety will only take away energy (the Force) from the current moment and never solve the problems of the future.
I saw this again and again this past year. What a waste it was to ask “Why?” about moments already gone, instead of trusting my own resources for the next moments.
But the film’s harshest – and least expected – critic could be the Vatican’s daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, which trashed the sequel for its lack of convincing antagonists. “The new director’s setup fails most spectacularly in its representation of evil, meaning the negative characters,” reads the non-bylined review, via Los Angeles Times.
“Darth Vader and above all the Emperor Palpatine were two of the most efficient villains in that genre of American cinema,” the article continues, noting that Abrams failed to craft evildoers on that same grandiose scale. “The counterpart of Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, wears a mask merely to emulate his predecessor, while the character who needs to substitute the Emperor Palpatine as the incarnation of supreme evil represents the most serious defect of the film. Without revealing anything about the character, all we will say is that it is the clumsiest and tackiest result you can obtain from computer graphics.”
…on Tuesday’s Late Show, Stephen Colbert examined why the Catholic Church responded so harshly to The Force Awakens.
“The Vatican, and this is true, gave a better review to Spotlight, and I’m not joking,” Colbert said of the film that tackled the child sex abuse scandal in Boston churches.
With all the millions commissioner Roger Goodell is spending on expanding the league’s brand to Europe and other international markets, should he not be spending a bit more attention to the boroughs and burgs that are in fact, his neighbors?
(11) ATTEMPTED HUMOR. Honest Trailers is often better at sounding unimpressed than being funny, as in its latest effort, The Martian.
[Thanks to David K.M. Klaus, Will R., Mark-kitteh, John King Tarpinian, and Joe H. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Shambles.]
