Binary Bonsai

The week before last, when Rikke and I were doing what we do best — namely nothing — I read, in-amongst several other books, the 1983 George Lucas biography by Dale Pollock, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas.

Now, I wouldn’t say that I’m obsessive compulsive about Star Wars, or George Lucas for that matter — others would; I don’t flatter myself that way — but I’m certainly a fan above the ordinary, having read several biographies, not to mention a whole heap of other books related either directly to Star Wars or the industries that sprung up in its wake. So, I’ve been around the block on this… Once or twice.

But before you get the wrong idea, let me just run some damage control on this, to make it sound less pathetic; me being after all a 30-year-old man with about a meters-worth of Star Wars books.

You see, it isn’t Star Wars, or George Lucas, or Lucasfilm, or the plentiful satellite companies, or the pop culture references, or the John Williams soundtracks, or the Lucas-Coppola connection, or the Lucas-Spielberg connection, or any of that stuff. It’s all of it and more.

Somehow, this particular branch of New Hollywood and the late 70’s became the ground zero of my creative inspiration, and for some inexplicable reason, the whole scene leading up to and coming down from Star Wars has become some sort of freaky creative nexus for me, from which I can replenish my energy in times of doubt and reaffirm my reason for doing what I believe in, despite… Well, despite whatever.

I’m not a collector, I don’t dress up as a Java (publicly), I don’t list my religion as Jedi on the census, I don’t write fan-fiction and so far I haven’t had any (too long, well choreographed, but otherwise uninteresting) fan films featured on theforce.net (but I wager that I can take most of my friends in Star Wars trivial pursuit).

Anyway; I read Skywalking, and I loved it. I often chastise Rikke for her (minimal) tabloid tendencies, but admittedly, when it comes to my idols, I’ve got the same blood flowing in my veins.

But it’s not that I care particularly about his no. 2 pencil or which brand of plaid Lucas digs. Rather, I’ve found that Lucas’s life is an endearing and heart-breaking story, not only in terms of his output, which has gone from the experimenting (and I think, genius) through the fantastic to the bland and at times downright obnoxious.

But what most people don’t know, is how Lucas’s personal life has followed a much more dramatic and it would seem, tragic arc. From the no-good car-geek to the cinema-wonder-kind and business giant who broke all the rules and did exactly what he wanted, and won. And who in doing so, lost not only his wife, Marcia, but also his boisterous mentor, Francis Ford Coppola and many other friends in the process.

Lucas’s own life is so fascinating, dramatic and (as I read it) tragic, that it would be a wonder if a bio-pic didn’t see the light of day sooner or later.

And if it does, Skywalking will no doubt be one of its main sources, and rightly so. Because despite it being 25-years old at the time of my writing this, no one else has ever had such free access to Lucas, his family and his friends and written about it.

And of course, Lucas never made the same mistake twice.

Few people have had to bear the brunt of so much success and at the same time so much failure as Lucas. The Citizen Kane comparison is apt. And while this book can’t make you unwatch Indy IV, perhaps reading it — supplementing with the suggestions below — will make him appear in a different light than the childhood-raping-Binks-loving-effects-whoring once great filmmaker he has gotten a rep for these days.

Now, for those of you out there, who like me, find this period of cinema not only fascinating, but sustaining, here’s some supplementary reading, have fun:

The Cinema of George Lucas is a great companion piece to Skywalking. It goes all the way up to Episode II, but is generally something of a fluff-piece. But what the book fails to yield in honesty, it gives in full-color photos. And plenty of them; including from Lucas’s earliest films, not available anywhere else (to my knowledge).

The Making of Star Wars, is amazing. Filled to the brim with never-before-seen photos and background information, it really is definitive. I cannot recommend this enough. Just be sure you grab the hardcover edition, as it has 50 extra pages of storyboards and notes.

The Secret History of Star Wars, which I’ve talked about before. It’s a bit too exhaustive at times, but it is so well researched and such a piece of work (and free), that to not read it, would be a damn shame. As a companion piece to, and extension of, The Making of Star Wars, it’s fan-tastic. There really is a secret history of Star Wars, and it’s gripping.

Once Upon a Galaxy (A Journal of the Making of The Empire Strikes Back), has a ridiculously long title, is relatively quickly read and touches only peripherally on the overall picture of Lucas’s life and the New Hollywood scene in general. It’s a good look behind the scenes (with a few truly wonderful nuggets of gold) and worth mentioning if only to bring it to the attention of anyone who might not know of it.

Droid Maker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution, which is a true pearl. A gem. A piece of radiated moon-rock! Fantastic. I cannot recommend it enough. Everything about how ILM came to be, the Edit Droid, Pixar and all the other revolutionary companies that followed after Star Wars. Do yourself a favor, and follow up with…

The Pixar Touch touches only slightly on Lucas and ILM, but is not only a good read in itself, but also gives a great insight into how Hollywood came to be what it is today.

The Complete Making of Indiana Jones is nowhere near as good as the Star Wars equivalent, but then it also covers all four movies, where the Star Wars book only covers the first film. And honestly, it’s a bit too back-clapping. But as a fan, you can’t really get around it, and in reconstructing the Spielberg/Lucas timeline, it’s indispensable.

Rikke and I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight today, and I thought, as the last man in the world to do so, I’d share my opinion on it, now that all the hype is (finally) dying out again.

Yeah, it’s pretty good. Rikke was less enthusiastic, but then she hated the first one, where I was only mildly entertained. But, almost as expected, we were both less than mind-blown by it. Going in, I was expecting a 7 (of 10), and that’s pretty much what I got.

Solid performances all around, a nice sleek look, and some daring scenes, not only in terms of stunts and action pieces, but also in the core idea, the turning of Harvey Dent by the Joker, which was most definitely the pièce de résistance of the whole film. And hey, you’ve gotta give it to a film which has the bad guy basically win. Sure, Batman soaks up the damage, by taking the fall, and the boat-people were all very sympathetic to each other, but basically, the Joker kicked everybody’s ass.

But, you know, it ain’t exactly perfect. Though I don’t really mind, since I really didn’t like Gotham in Batman Begins, it felt as if they changed their minds about Gotham this time around. For me, on the one hand, it worked better, but I still lean towards Burton’s Gotham (but, to be fair, that goes for just about the entire film).

There were as I said, some nice action set pieces. I love the tumbler going head to head with the garbage truck; good stuff! I loved the speed of the pod, but hated, hated, hated the design. But I already knew that (good comments discussion).

They gross seems to contradict what I have to say about it, but I really don’t like most of their bat-design aesthetics in this franchise. But that’s all covered in the above link, and I’ll refrain from going over it again, except to say that this time around it’s paradoxically both better and worse.

Now, I don’t remember how well they did the hand-to-hand fights in the first film, but I’m guessing it was the same blur-blur-somebody-goes-down-jump-blur and so on, as in this one.

It has no effect on me, at all. At all. All I see is a dark blur apparently fighting another blur, and then the sound of somebody slapping pork-chops in a foley room.

That’s choreography. That ain’t fighting.

Fighting is when Batman’s fist, from aaaall the way back there, connects with somebody’s face; CRACK! and you see and hear and feel them take the hit, the back of their head knocking dust out of the brickwall behind them, and blood spraying from their nose as they drop like a sack of potatoes to the floor.

You want to see a fight? See the aptly named Fight Club. There’s your fight. Not this pantsy swoosh-swoosh crap.

But I don’t want you to get the impression that I didn’t like it, because I did. It was pretty well paced, really understood its own premise and lived up to it and carried it through to the very end. And it was a great premise, as mentioned before. In fact, while it was kind of long, I for once didn’t find it to be too long for its own good (Rikke did though, so the war isn’t won quite yet); in fact, I wouldn’t have minded if there had been just 5-8 minutes more character scenes.

And most of the sequences were really, really well put together.

I know it sounds both slightly moronic, and not a little grumpy, but it’s almost as if this, along with most modern comic-films, are simply too tight. Too well-paced and balanced.

I need some breathing room. Some quirkiness. Pieces that don’t fit.

Not to be an asshole, but you know, Katie Holmes wasn’t in it, and for that alone it was better than its predecessor.

So yeah. Entertaining, good, but there’s some people that needs to take a serious chill-pill, cuz this ain’t the be all, end all.

Regardless, I wish Morgan Freeman a speedy recovery.

I’m sorry for this past week’s permission-problem-outage, but despite having vacation, it’s been everything but quiet around here. And before we get on to other business, let me just take one more opportunity to congratulate Rasmus and Anna-Vera on their wedding this weekend, it was fantastic!

Now, down to business.

I think I’ll try and upgrade BB to WP 2.6 one of the next few days, just to have the chance to play around with it properly, before finally taking the leap up to the just release Habari 0.5. I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to play around with it yet, but I’m so very proud to have been a part of that project so far. The work we’ve done these last few months is really something. There’s also a new project site, which is quite an improvement already.

So that’s coming along strong. I can’t wait to get it up and running on BB; I’m really just waiting for Chris to do the textile plugin he promised me… (nudge nudge, eh eh?).

Now, I’ve got some drafts for various entries I didn’t get to post over the last week, but now that the weather in Copenhagen has turned from LA to Seattle, what else is there to do but honker down and get some writing done?

Well, there’s watching movies, reading books and cooking food, but… Well, I’ll get them written, alright? I get enough whine from my friends about the activity-level on here already, so I guess I need to pick it up a bit, eh?

In the meanwhile, Steve Lam has been working quietly behind the scenes, and just released a new release candidate (haha… We just like the sound of it) of K2 yesterday, all 2.6 ready and everything. Knock yourself out!

And in closing: Twitter killed the blog. It’s true.

It’s with great joy, that I can link to the newly released Habari 0.5. It took less than half a year to go from an idea to a fully fledged and wonderfully implemented Monolith.

I might have done the design, but I could never have pulled off the implementation, which was not only a team effort, but a sight to behold.

Work is being done on a demo version, but for now, I hope you’ll take out the time to try it out on your own. I think you might like it.

Spielberg probably didn’t vomit every morning before he went onto the set of Jurassic Park, but the story has it that he did when he made Amblin’:”(Steven Spielberg – A Biography by Joseph McBride, page 159, as related by Donald Heitzer, assistant camera man on Amblin’)”:.

Largely a silent movie, running at 25 minutes, made and marketed for the even by late-60’s measly sum of $20.000:”(Wikipedia says $15.000, but is unsourced. My Spielberg biography has it at $20.000, which looks to be a quote from Denis Hoffman, who put up the budget for the film. I’m guessing the film itself was $15.000 and marketing was $5000.)”:, Amblin’ is the first film the then 22-year-old Spielberg shot on 35mm. And it is a fantastic look at the pure unbridled potential that was and is Steven Spielberg.

Filming started June 6th, 1968, spent a weekend on a set at a soundstage belonging to Cinefx, a company owned by Denis Hoffman, who funded and produced the short film. Here it almost got cancelled, when Spielberg and Allen Daviau (whose work on Amblin’ is wonderful, and who went on to do E.T, Empire of the Sun and The Color Purple with Spielberg) spent three times the allotted 35mm stock. After this, it spent 8 days in the baking melting unbearable heat of the southern California desert, where unpaid crew quit left and right.

Once filming wrapped, Spielberg himself spent 6 weeks of his nights cutting the three hours of footage down to the 25 minute final piece, in a lent editing room, while listening to soundtracks on his record player.

And finally, after having it shown to Sidney Sheinberg, he got his big break in the shape of a 7-year contract for Universal, doing TV series, before finally doing Duel. Then The Sugarland Express. And then finally in 1975, Jaws.

I’m telling you this, because until recently, to see Amblin’, you would have had to either have gone to the library of a film school, where I’ve heard that they have copies abound. Or, you could pick it up on eBay in a poor VHS-quality copy priced at $20. Or finally, if you were extremely lucky, you might have seen it at one of its exceedingly rare screenings.

The good news is that someone finally got their act together, and it is now available not only on Youtube (haven’t embedded, as I think you should view it fullscreen), but also as a 350MB download! The bad news is that it looks to be the very VHS copy that has been floating around eBay. So the picture falters at times, and there’s an issue with the loudness of the audio; but it is most definitely watchable (and a huge ol’ bear-hug to whoever got this thing online!).

It’s so interesting to find these old first outings by accomplished directors, as they so often end up being a major influence on their later work; and despite all the limitations and restrictions (or perhaps because of them), it feels almost as if these are their most honest films.

Take James Cameron’s Xenogenesis for instance. Overly ambitious, techno-centric and more interested in effects and the uh-ah’s of its sci-fi setting than in bringing any kind of humanity to its characters. Fast-forward, and notice how little changed over the years, except Cameron’s understanding that to get all of this science fiction stuff he was dreaming up on to the screen, he had to be better at dealing with the human aspect.

Kind of explains the slightly stiff and by-the-numbers (though riveting) scripts he has a tendency to churn out.

With Amblin’, you have the diametric opposite. Spielberg’s first outing is all about humanity, love, feelings, innocence and all the other softness for which he has since become almost infamous. Whatever tech-lust Spielberg might have, goes on behind the lens, not in front of it. And despite moving on to do some pretty tech-heavy films (Jurassic Park for instance), he almost always keeps the human side of things front and center. Especially so in the early part of his career, which is, I’ll admit, the best.

Spielberg himself doesn’t think much of the film, calling it “a great Pepsi commercial” with as much soul and content as a piece of driftwood.”, which would explain why it hasn’t seen commercial release

And even went so far as to say that he couldn’t look at it now. It really proved how apathetic I was during the sixties. When I look back at that film, I can easily say, ‘No wonder I didn’t go to Kent State,’ or ‘No wonder I didn’t go to Vietnam or I wasn’t protesting when all my friends were carrying signs and getting clubbed in Century City.’ I was off making movies, and Amblin’ is the slick by-product of a kid immersed up to his nose in film., page 161)”:

But you know, not only is Spielberg underselling himself in terms of the emotional and social ‘story’ Amblin’ is able to deliver without a single spoken word, he’s also underselling how personal the film probably is to him when it comes right down to it.

You can still sense his playfulness and light-hearted hand in all the films he did up through the 70’s and early 80’s. And I sometimes wish that he could go back and do something in that same vein again. I still love his films. But there is no doubt that the ‘films for films sake’ film maker now lives in the shadow of the socially and politically conscious film maker that has delivered some very sincere films, which, while still head and neck above most of the competition, haven’t lived up to the pinnacle of E.T., even after all these years.

Somehow it seems particularly apt that Amblin’ Entertainment’s logo is composed of the word Amblin’, his first film, and Elliot and E.T. on the bike, crossing the moon, from his, to his own admission, most personal film.

And now that Amblin’ has surfaced for all to see, the next thing to keep an eye out for it Spielberg’s own 8mm ‘making of’ footage from the shoot, allegedly:”(So says Daviau)”: locked away in Spielberg’s personal vault.

PS: Spielberg currently owns the rights to Amblin’, having bought them back from Denis Hoffman in 1978. If you’re so inclined you can also have a gander and just over a minute’s worth of Escape to Nowhere (originally 40 minutes, made when he was in highschool) and about a minute Firelight (a 140 minutes precusor to Close Encounters. You can find out more on Wikipedia), both clips are unfortunately without sound.