In 1951 he'd made BEAST FROM 20,00 FATHOMS, which brought him to longtime partner Charles Schneer's attention. Schneer wanted to do a film which in which a monster destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge (I wonder if the term 'low concept' might apply). He'd seen BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS and got Harryhausen for IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA. Harryhausen had done the octopus--actually a hexapus to save animation work. The two worked together, making many science fiction films with good special effects but otherwise mediocre production values. The films included 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH and EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS. They were looking for new projects and Harryhausen pulled out the Sinbad sketches to show Schneer. Schneer liked the idea. Columbia Pictures was less than keen, but was eventually convinced. They were given a budget way too low, particularly because the material called for Harryhausen to use color for the first time. His main technique was stop-motion, with which you build a metal skeleton with ball-and-socket joints, put a rubberized hide on it, sculpt features, and then film it a frame at a time.
They wanted a better score than the usual cheap Columbia stuff, so they took the film to Bernard Herrmann. It really wasn't Herrmann's sort of film since it was basically a children's film. I could be wrong, but the only previous fantastical film Herrmann had scored was DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. Herrmann's usual reaction to overtures that he should do this sort of film was 'Why are you showing me this garbage?' To the filmmakers' surprise, he responded to SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD with excitement and in the years that followed he scored several Harryhausen films and became associated with them as he became associated with Hitchcock films.
It occurred to me watching his clips of CLASH OF THE TITANS that artists have been drawing the winged horse Pegasus for 3000 or 3500 years. In all that time Harryhausen may have been the first artist ever to give serious thought to how a winged horse would land. The film shows it in a very smooth and believable motion of the horse landing back legs first and then lowering the forelegs. I might almost say the motion is natural, but it occurs to me that no normal horse would have anything like an analogous motion. When jumping they land forelegs first and if they do that from too great a height they break their front legs.
During the question-and-answer, I asked how he made a motion no horse could duplicate seem so natural. He first gave some credit to FANTASIA for doing winged horses in motion but added that threedimensional animation forces realism constraints that are not present with flat animation. Why rear legs first? The wings would be over the shoulders giving less support at lower speeds to the rear portions.
Harryhausen also mentioned that he had done sketches and test footage for a WAR OF THE WORLDS set in Victorian times. I was curious to find out how the tripod war machines would walk, but I never got a chance to ask.
For reasons I wasn't clear on, Caroline Munro was at Harryhausen's talk. Rarely do female stars get attached to the science fiction/fantasy genre. Caroline Munro is fairly attractive and was in several fantasy films back in the 1970s, including Harryhausen's GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD and STARCRASH. I got a picture of her. Now, I saw Elke Sommer when I lived in Detroit and the first quarter-inch of her was solid make-up. I expected that was pretty standard. Caroline Munro is no raving beauty, but she looks pretty much the same close up as she looks on the screen. And oddly, I had the feeling she could go back and shoot scenes for GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD at least 12 years later and they would be indistinguishable from the originals.
We were at that presentation for about 90 minutes, then I went back to the room to write and at 5:15 PM we met with Dale, Jo, Kate, Dave, and Pete and went to eat at a Greek steak house. I had lamb.
We then went en masse to the Hugo awards. This is really one of the big events of the convention. The Hugo Awards are given in an event much like the Academy Awards. This is the big fan-awarded prize. Well, we started to line up for the award ceremony. Evelyn had asked at the information desk where to line up and they told her where to go. We were lined up with a fair number of people lined up behind us. A little German woman came over to talk with us and join us in line. She is the same woman who pushed to the front of the line before the Hugo ceremonies last year in Atlanta. Dave also remembers her. If she pushes to the head of the line in New Orleans next year it may be to her disadvantage. As it turns out, where they told us to line up was the wrong place. So getting in was a hassle. Earlier in this log I recorded who won the various Hugos. Greg Bear's story 'Tangents' was the only winner I really wanted to win.
Following the awards there was a very nice fireworks dispay on the beach. It lasted about 20 minutes but had enough for 60 minutes of display the way they would be done in the United States. Then it was back to the room to talk a little while and I slipped out to see STATIC, the last of the Odeon films. This was an odd film about a man with an odd invention. It is a tough film to describe without giving too much away, but it is about a rock musician who goes to visit her boyfriend who is working on some sort of strange invention. On the way back to the hotel, Dave and I ran into Kate and Cynthia. Kate had seen STATIC, so we could discuss it with her. After a little while it was back inside and to bed.
Monday is kind of a wind-down day. Evelyn was late getting up. Breakfast as usual. The first panel was 'Science Fiction is History's Dustbin.' Nobody had any idea what that was supposed to be about, including the panelists. It was a less than enthralling panel and I spent most of it listening with one ear but writing my log.
The next panel, 'The Unnatural History of the Vampire,' had four writers of vampire novels talking about traditional monsters. To begin with, each of the authors (George R. R. Martin, Tanith Lee, Suzy McKee Charnas, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro) talked about the traditional vampire rules that he/she broke in his/her writing. I later asked the curmudgeonly question: 'Where do you draw the line between writing stories about vampires who do reflect in mirrors and about giants who don't happen to be tall?'
'Well,' they farbled, 'it is intrinsic to a giant that he is tall. The only thing intrinsic about a vampire is that he drinks blood.' Someone else corrected them and said, 'No, some vampires drink lifeforce,' then they went off on a tangent about Japanese vampires who drink spinal fluid. But the audience reaction to my question had been pretty good.
Martin puts vampires on riverboats, so clearly they are not afraid of running water. Tanith Lee says that her vampires are very modern and can walk around in the daytime on cloudy days. Charnas said, 'I discarded all the old rubbish.'
There was some discussion of why vampires and werewolves were so popular. Someone suggested that it is because ordinary people like us become them. Ordinary people do not become mummies. Mummies are an ineffective monster because they move so slowly. Someone quoted Bill Cosby as saying, 'Anyone caught by the Mummy deserved it.' They talked about how it is pretty tough to show a dragon on film and so much cheaper to do a vampire or a werewolf. Also, we seem to know the mythos of vampires and werewolves.
Tanith Lee told an interesting anecdote about a kindergarden class in the United States who was asked to draw pictures of wolves. They drew pictures that were mostly mouths and teeth. Then a semidomesticated wolf was brought into the classroom and the children were allowed to pet it. The only moment of trouble they had was when it came time to take the wolf away and the children started crying when they didn't want to see it go. After that the class was told again to draw pictures of wolves. This time they drew bright eyes and sleek coats and giant feet since wolves do seem to have very big feet. This is the kind of lesson meant more for parents and is more lost on the kids.
There was some discussion of zombies and their basis in reality. It has been only relatively recently that we have been able to determine with some certainty that a person is dead. That is part of the reason for laying a person out for a few days before burial--to give the person a chance to change his mind and get up. A headstone is for the opposite reason; it marks the grave but it is also to hold the departed down.
In a previous panel it had been noted that vampires were upper-class, werewolves were middle-class, and zombies were lowerclass.
Once again someone noted that vampires were upper-class, and Evelyn asked how many of the panelists had read VARNEY THE VAMPIRE. The is the famous pre-DRACULA vampire novel. Dover Books reprinted it. Tanith Lee claimed to have read some parts. Nobody else had.
After that panel, Ev and I and Jo and Dale went for lunch. We ate at a French restaurant and had the worst meal of the trip so far. Neither the selection nor the quality was particularly good.
After that the panel was 'Lysenko Lives--Scientific Myths That Serve the Cause.' Again, it was half an ear listening and half an ear log-writing. One interesting comment I did glean is that the United States government does know plague containment techniques and might use them against AIDS, but doesn't dare because the far right and far left don't want to see it done. The far right wants to see AIDS run its course against homosexuals and minorities. The far left doesn't want to see minorities restricted by quarantines.
Next I went to a discussion of science fiction in the 1980s, but soon decided they were going to talk only about conventions and fandom in the 1980s. So instead I decided to walk out on Brighton Pier.
This was Banque Holiday and the beach and pier were thronged with people. The feel was very much like British must have felt after World War II. The town had put out striped beach lounges. There was a sort of makeshift bandstand where someone in a white suit and flat straw hat was singing 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles.' A lot of older people were sunning themselves and listening. Perhaps beach is the wrong word to what was there. It was more a bank of pebbles going into the water. People seem to walk on it barefoot which may mean that the British still have what it takes to be an empire.
One amusement pier has corroded away already and the one that is used is showing some signs that it may follow in another few years. A pier does not offer a whole lot of space, but it is enough to put up some rides and have a couple of pavilions for gambling. It has shooting galleries, sellers hawking plastic swords, prefabbed practical jokes and the like, bouncing chambers, candy-floss sellers, lots of stuff like that. I guess one of the stranger things there is a bookstore. I don't think you'd find much of a bookstore at most of our amusement parks. Mostly it was for the older people who were reading on the pier, but a lot of the books for sale were for teenaged readers. They were things like Mack Bolen novels. On the pier they broadcast popular music hosted by a disk jockey who advertised a place to buy sunglasses. I am pretty sure he was broadcasting only for the pier and the places he advertised were certainly on the pier.
I walked through one of the casinos and saw people playing slot machines--not the one-armed bandits of Nevada, but ones that looked more like you'd expect in an amusement park.
As you walked along, you heard all sorts of British accents, particularly Cockney and what I think might be called toffee-nosed. One little girl talking to her father called him DAH-dee. I tend to think of that as un upper-class accent, but one look at the family killed that theory right away.
If you continue on out toward the end of the pier, past the guy selling used records, you suddenly find all the noise dying down. At the end of the pier things are pretty quiet. People sit there looking out over the water. |
