Harry Harrison on Soylent Green

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Harry Harrison’s own thoughts on how they mangled his book, “Make Room, Make Room!”, to make Soylent Green. It turns out that major plot points like the cannibal-crackers and furniture-girls weren’t even in the original story, and Charlton Heston himself thought that “the whole payoff on the cannibalism element lacked impact.”

It was almost naively anticlimactic, how they built the whole thing up to “Soylent Green is people,” as though this discovery could be the ultimate, outrageous revelation of an already-overpopulated world. In truth, the cannibalism element would have had more shock value as a cynical subplot. But then, that element of camp and naivete was exactly what made this movie a cult classic. (That, and Edward G. Robinson’s final performance. To know that he performed his character’s death scene so well, while he himself was dying of cancer, is an intense, powerful thing.)

With that, I think it can be said that “Soylent Green is people,” in more ways than one. Off to work on that title sequence.

(Links, by the way, via writer Michael Carroll.)

Make Room!

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As I mobile blogged earlier, one of our projects in Multimedia Typography class is to re-execute the opening sequence of a movie using principles of modern motion typography.

I chose Soylent Green, that famous sci-fi B-flick directed by Richard Fleischer, starring Charlton Heston and an old, post-McCarthyist, terminally ill Edward G. Robinson. I felt at first that the movie’s original title sequence, a series of quick-cutting stock-stills showing mankind’s progression from simplistic idyll to technological overload to post-apocalyptic decay, failed to capture or foreshadow in any way the supposed horror that “Soylent Green is People!”

And so, all weekend, I’ve been watching Soylent Green over and over and over — especially that title sequence. It’s actually quite powerful, and when I discovered that the original book on which the movie was based — Harry Harrison’s Make Room, Make Room! — was more about overpopulation than Soylent cannibalism, I realized that the original content of the story was expressed quite well through that chaotic collage of images.

Not to say that I won’t lean more towards the sensationalized Soylent Green part of it. I’ve already made an animated background in AfterEffects, showing a huge grid of green wafers. Mmm. People Biscuits, anyone?

I’ll have more commentary on the movie tomorrow. Must sleep now.

Trench Coat Biteback

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Meggie responds to a year-old rant on Matrix-y trench coats in worship by telling me to get a life.

Thanks so much, Meggie, for reminding me how much more important it is to impress the elderly church folk with trendy freakishness rather than be concerned about propriety in worship. Truly, I, the stodgy hymn-singing traditionalist, am shamed by the unsearchable profundities of pop Christianity, which conforms so effectively to the ways of the world.

Rolling Rolling Rolling

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Via BWG, a strange, mind-altering biblical reference: Luke 4:20. “Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down…” Does that and “420” ring a bell?

(Note: KJV renders it as “he closed the book.” Safer, eh?)

MICA webcams

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I found the URL’s for a couple of webcams over at MICA: Java Corner in Bunting Center, the building where 90% of my time is spent; and the Brown Center construction site, where they’re building the new multimedia center which I probably won’t be around for next year.

I’ve downloaded FlashIT and iCamMaster, and I’ll see if I can make some nifty time-lapses.

Hunt Valley to New York Bus

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Update: Ivymedia has all the cheap East Coast buses you could ever need.

Those of you who’ve come searching for the cheap DC-NY Chinatown bus may also want to check out Hunt Valley Motor Coach in Baltimore. It’s not quite as cheap as the Chinatown bus, and DC’ers will have to drive or take the train up to Hunt Valley (which is so far North from Baltimore it’s practically Canada), but at about $35 round-trip it’s still a pretty good deal, as compared to about $80 round-trip on Greyhound. (Thanks to Wayne for the tip.)