The
connections between the cinema and science fiction should be many
and constant.This Is a science fiction era we live
in and the cinema is a science fictional device, that is, a machine
which, only a few short years ago, would have been looked upon
as impossible, miraculous, beyond the ken of the ordinary person
or even the extraordinary person.But now – suddenly - this one
“empathy” machine has been given into the hands of mankind,
whereby, if used well, we can: Find ourselves in
the body of a white man If we are black... …the body of
a black man if we if we are white We can be Baptist
while remaining Catholic We can be woman and
remain man We can be the dwarf
while we are 6’ tall Ugly if handsome and
handsome if ugly.So with this one “machine”
alone much in the world changed, in good, and in bad directions.
the projection machine and the power
Hitler used this invention to empathize
attention to a false image of Germany. It follows that any invention
is a means to power and therefore, since we live among robots,
one would imagine we would be curious about the ideas embodied
in our machines, how they came about, and how they were fixed
immutably in steel and plastic.But, surprisingly, there has been little
contact between the idea-in-the-machine and one of the machines
- cinema - itself.This is a great loss to us all.For – our robot children - Unless we continually
examine our dilemma, man teemed about by robots, we cannot hope
to remember that these devices out of Wells & Verne are our
own children and must be called to order and summoned to better
directions.This, It seems to me, would make for
exciting filmaking.The field is almost untouched.
favorite scientifilms
There have been a number of s.f. movies
which are valid and Important.Things to Come
in its day, was far ahead of its time and, if memory serves me,
quite remarkable.The Day the Earth Stood Still strikes me as a fine attempt to speak to mankind today about
its problems on Earth.My own outline and freatment (I was
not allowed to work on the screenplay) became a moderately good
movie It Came from Outer Space, tho it must be admitted
the theme of the fflm - ”a thing may look hostile
but not necessarily be hostile” - was more important than
the film itself, due to the studio feeling it had to inject close-ups
of the monsters, which frightened no one and thus watered down
the impact.
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Breaking
the Sound Barrier would have been an s.f. film 30 years ago… as it is it
takes the materials of s.f. right up to the edge of Space for a
moving experience all around; a fine job by David Lean.Forbidden Planet’s
main idea is of a Herman Melville and much of the latter part of
the film is most exciting both as to concept and technical execution.
Unfortunately the film is marred by mediocre performances, direction
and writing, which include the usual “female mush” and
assorted vulgarities having to do with Robby the Robot. I have rarely
envied a concept as much as this one, however, and would have loved
to have had a chance to write about the “Id that all
unknowingly rears itself up in monster form to destroy man.”
Truly, this is an idea worthy of attention, and it is regrettable
it was shunted off into the hands of incompetents.There may be a
dozen other s.f. films I cannot recall now, this morning,
of good quality. If I have forgotten them for the time being, I
hope to be forgiven by those who remember.
bradbury’s film ambitions
I would like to see my The Martian
Chronicles done, in Todd-AO or Cinerama. I have a great enthusiasm
for Cinerama and feel it has yet to be tested in the right directions
with proper materials.I would also like to do a trio or quartet
of my s.f. stories, especially stories like “The Veldt”,
“The Pedestrian”, “Zero Hour”;
etc. etc.Before I die, God willing many years from now, I would
like to work for the following directors: David Lean, Kurosawa,
Fellini, Bergman and Zinneman.I have already had the great pleasure
of working one entire summer with Sir Carol Reed, on the s.f. short
novel “And the Rock Cried Out”. Sir Carol and I have tried
to get financing on this for many years, since 1957, but because
of its political nature we have never been able to move the project.
He is an admirable man and I would like to work with him again.I
would also like to work with Jack Clayton, whom I met while working
on Moby Dick.I am looking forward, now, to Truffaut’s
production of Fahrenheit 451 with great excitement.
I am sure he will do an absolutely fantstic job.
the mind molders
My literary forefathers are Wells,
Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, Sax Rohmer, Aldous
Huxley, Victor Appleton who wrote the s.f. Tom Swift
series in my childhood, L. Frank Baum who wrote the Oz books,
Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Win. Faulkner,
Thos. Wolfe, John Collier, Ernest Hemingway & Jessamyn West
sci-fi a Ia Ray
I have a very personal definition of
s.f. which means man lost in the maze of his machineries and how
to find a way out to light again.I am not interested in how to build
an atom bomb but only in how to use the power of the atom to build
man into a better shape.To guess possible futures
based on possible machines which sum up mankind’s philosophies
in portable concretized shapes is the business
of s.f. writers.But, again, I would prefer not to guess machines
so much as man’s reactions to said machines.
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