Binary Bonsai

I just uploaded several hundreds new Star Wars photos to my flickr account, included the above, which stands out I think. Enjoy.

On an average day on my flickr account, I’ll have anywhere between 3000 to 5000 views. Three days ago, when a set of Star Wars storyboards hit kottke.org and Digg on the same day, I had 357.000 views. Since then the set has gone around the blogosphere, hitting Wired earlier today, and the views have settled into a more reasonable 90.000 views a day.

Yikes.

Them being so popular now, I’m actually surprised they weren’t ‘discovered’ earlier, since they’ve been up there for nearly two years now. But also, I’m pleased by how happy people have been with seeing these nuggets o’ nerd gold. No hate, no ‘blah blah prequels, blah blah Banta pudu!’. Just pure nerd love.

On that note, by the way, if you’re interested in more Star Wars drawings, paintings, memorabilia and background information check out the list at the end of this post for some books to pick up. And also, be sure to check out my other Star Wars photos on flickr.

May the force be with you. Always.

Update: I’ve uploaded a a new batch of about 20 Empire and Jedi storyboards to the set.

A story that Blade Runner 2 was being worked on by two screenwriters from DJ Caruso’s Eagle Eye floated recently. It was unclear just how official this project was, and how serious it should be taken. Was it the hopes of this screenwriter, or was it actually in pre-production already?

As it turns out, a bit of both, though at the moment it looks like it’s mostly the hopes of Travis Wright, who wrote a long letter to /Film explaining the status of the project, his involvement in it and this finishing remark:

I know there will be haters in regards to ever continuing Deckard’s story, but in my lifetime I’d love to sit in the theater on a friday night of its opening weekend and watch as Deckard sees attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Who wants to be there with me?!? Geek on.

I know next to nothing about Travis Wright, but for now, the above says just about all I need to hear. And before you start thinking to yourself ‘Hey, you know, I always did want to see attack ships blahblahblah’, allow me the opportunity to convince you otherwise.

Blade Runner Is A Unique Snowflake

In the history of the film industry, few works have been as monolithic, influential and respected as Blade Runner. Despite reception problems, continuity issues and re-releases over the years, it hasn’t lost an ounce of respect- Quite the opposite in fact.

It might not matter how many American Pie, Ernest Goes To… and Porky’s sequels and spin-offs they churn out. They are, for whatever qualities they may have, easily copied. Nor does it matter how many Star Trek films they do, the series was built for it. Jason? Whatever. American Ninja? Knock ýourself out.

But Blade Runner is a unique film in almost every way possible. A perfect storm of source material, talent and serendipity. It cannot be replicated. Even Ridley Scott, in all his visual splendor, hasn’t been able to make a film since, that has been able to get within eye-sight of it. Doesn’t that say something worth listening to?

Perhaps it was exactly because Blade Runner leaves the audience with open questions that it has such an impressive longevity. And perhaps this longevity isn’t an invitation to create a sequel staring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Tell, Don’t Show

There’s a golden rule in writing, which goes show, don’t tell. As rules go, this ain’t half-bad. But there are times when instead of reinforcing the illusion, it breaks it. Consider for instance if you had read this instead:

I know there will be haters in regards to ever continuing Skywalker story, but in my lifetime I’d love to sit in the theater on a friday night of its opening weekend and watch ‘the clone wars’. Who wants to be there with me?!? Geek on.

It’ll be awesome! Oh. Wait. The clone wars were better off having remained an off-hand remark by Obi-Wan.

We don’t need to meet Deckard’s wife, we don’t need to know that Rachel inherited Tyrell Corp and we don’t need to see Harrison Ford pick up the Deckard mantle again (especially after we saw Indy 4, in which Indy wants nothing more than to watch a few episodes of Matlock while gobbling down luke-warm soup back at the retirement home.

Blade Runner Already Has Sequels

Three direct sequels in fact: Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Humanity, Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night and Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon, none of which I’ve read, and none of which I intend to read.

Also, David Webb Peoples, whom I have mucho mucho respect for (Leviathan, Salute of the Jugger, 12 Monkeys, Ladyhawke) co-wrote Blade Runner and went on to write Soldier¹, which was then done by Paul W.S. Anderson, an absolute hack, who rampages through franchises like the black plaque through Europe. Now, what’s interesting about this, is that Peoples considers Soldier a sidequel to Blade Runner, and of course the film… movie, let’s go with movie — even has a cascade of references to Blade Runner.

In fact, if you want to see attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, it wasn’t in the movie, but thankfully Mr. Anderson was gracious enough to put it in the trailer.

And then of course, the game, which was actually surprisingly good, everything considered. Though it did at times feel as if it was simply trying to touch all of the things that made Blade Runner, Blade Runner, rather than expand the universe.

Hell, Vangelis even did a sequel to the soundtrack, which was… Let’s not go there.

Ultimately, none of the above could capture the kind of lightning in a bottle that drives the original. It’s not impossible. Nothing is impossible. But it is implausible. And I would personally prefer if it was left alone as it is.

The Bottomline

I’m not a staunch sequel hater as such. There have been great sequels, I freely admit as much. In fact, I’m personally looking very much forward to TR2N. And hey, T2 was a great, if more family-friendly followup to its low-budget steel-bladed adrenalin-pumped predecessor. It works because Cameron was an unfliching egomaniac, which is probably why Aliens works as a sequel to Alien, despite being a fairly shallow Vietnam-in-Space followup to a much more atmospheric and erotic predecessor (stylistically, the aliens franchise is all over the place, and for that you can blame Aliens). Of course, of all sequels, I still hold The Empire Strikes Back as the best, for managing to expand on the universe, the story, the characters and their relationships, while also being a riveting ride.

But for every one of the classic ‘great’ sequels, there’s a plethora of Indy 4’s. Sequels with high production value, star quality and little else. No vision, no substance, no heart.

Consider 2010: The Year We Make Contact, a movie which isn’t in itself that bad, it just happens to quiver in the shadow of the greatest film ever made, which makes it look like a kindergarten project. And why? Nevermind Arthur C. Clarke’s books, which in my humble opinion never lived up to the film anyway, and consider instead the fact that someone decided that 2001: A Space Odyssey could do with a sequel, probably because:

I know there will be haters in regards to ever continuing Monolith story, but in my lifetime I’d love to sit in the theater on a friday night of its opening weekend and watch as we trespass on the land of the ephemeral mystery, imposing our mediocrity to the jovial sounds of cheap synthesizers. Who wants to be there with me?!? Geek on.

Consider T3: The Rise of the Machines, which is not only a pretty bad film in itself, but which cheapens what came before by being “essentially a B movie, content to be loud, dumb and obvious, and to leave the Great Ideas to bona fide public intellectuals like Keanu Reeves and the Hulk”².

Consider Alien Resurrection, which is quite frankly disastrous in every way possible. And then some.

Consider Batman & Robin… Or don’t.

Consider any of the Planet of the Apes sequels.

Any of the Jaws sequels.

But more than anything else, consider that we already saw attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion in our minds eye, and it was a sight to see.

Don’t cheapen this. Just leave it alone and pass on by. Please.

1. I haven’t read the Soldier script, but word on the street is that Paul W.S. Anderson did extensive rewrites, and I chose to believe that, considering the rest of his atrocious output. ↩


2. Thank you A.O. Scott ↩

I love books. And I amass books. So much so, that between the two of us — Rikke and I — there is no doubt who is in charge of the appropriation and storage of dead trees, which might not have been so paradoxical, had Rikke not been a librarian…

In fact, bringing home new books has stopped being a monetary concern and turned into a volumetric one. Yet, against all odds, I brave both the imminent collapse of this 17th century building at the hands of ‘just one more Gibson, there’s good in him still, I can sense it!’¹ and such worldly concerns as where to store these damned things, and one-click-buy like there was no tomorrow and I had a fallout shelter to stock.

A few ‘art of’ books, a sci-fi romp here and there — which I usually find boring and long-winded, being rather hard to please — the occasional ‘real’ novel — which I inevitably find much more rewarding, and spend twice the time reading — some Alan Moore comics, a batch of Star Wars books — because I can’t be stopped — anything by Michael Herr, a stack of director biographies, some books on writing books — keeping the dream alive since 1978 — and the occasional technical manual of sorts, preferably ‘the definitive guide’ to something.

I wish I went wider. Insightful political commentaries or something similarly serious. Hell, even a self-help book here and there. But I don’t go wide, I go deep. No, not in the ‘4am-drunk-philosophy-deep’-sense. Rather, the completist-deep.

It’s not exactly new to rave against such utterances, but still; in spite of what Steve² might think, some people do read (you go Khoi!). You probably know a few of them. You might be one of them. I sure wish I was.

This is the real paradox, since I love reading as much as I love the books themselves. But in the cold hard light of day, I simply have too many other ‘things’ that creep up and peck away at my time, so that when night-time rolls around, I strip down and crawl under the covers, I either have no time at all or no scarcely 20-30 minutes for a small chunk of whatever book I’m currently deluding myself that I’ll eventually finish.

Insane! Because as much as I love the books themselves — the design, the layout, the type and all of that, which the American publishers do so much better than we Europeans can ever hope for — I love to read just as much! Hell, our trip to the summer house a few weeks back was literally all about reading books and watching films. That’s what we did, and that was all we did, and I loved every minute of it, finishing several books³ and thinking to myself these very thoughts: Gee, I know what? I should really put some effort into reading more.

But it’s one of those annoying things that is apparently easier said than done, which is evidenced by the fact that on this perfectly readable sunday evening, half-past nine, instead of reading Blindness or Citizen Spielberg two books on my active reading list — I’ll let the ones I’m ‘passively’ reading go uncounted for now — I’m writing an entry on my blog about not being able to find the time for reading…

How about that.

1. Spook Country. I can’t read that thing, it just feels so… irrelevant. ↩


2. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” # ↩


3. The Pixar Story by David A Price, The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, Skywalking by Dale Pollock — which I wrote about — and The Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K Dick. Oh, and some comics, but they don’t really count for this. ↩

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.