On the Street Where You Live but in Vegas with Showgirls

There are many nice touches in the Paramount series The Offer.  How much of it is true is another matter that is above my pay grade. In one episode, Al Ruddy flies to Las Vegas to recruit Vic Damone to play the role of the fictional Frank Sinatra-like character for the Godfather.  Ultimately although Damone was offered the role he chose not to play it for fear of pissing off Sinatra.

As part of this sequence we are all comped into a show with Damone as the headlining act and we are treated to an unforgettable rendition of "On the Street Where You Live" which is from the musical My Fair Lady.   In the original stage production and movie of Lady, the young swain belts out his love song in Victorian dress in England and he is so sincere.  

 

But in The Offer, we are on stage in Vegas with Showgirls.  It is also sincere!  And authentic.  It captures the essence of Las Vegas and our culture.

The Street Where I Live

draft

I have often walked down this street before.  But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before.  All of a sudden I am several stories high, just to be on the street where you live.

Miracles from Molecules

(This post is in progress).

I miss the cold war, when not everyone was using computers to steal money and distribute pornography, and we thought a new world was coming, a world with freedom and economic security for everyone.  A world where the rich would not oppress the poor, where disease would be defeated, and where everyone could explore their full potential, irregardless of the circumstances that the accidents of their birth allowed.

This is the world that the composers of the post-show of the Disney/Monsanto Adventure Through Inner Space celebrated.  I was listening to this song this morning and I felt compelled to transcribe the lyrics, an artifact from a past that imagined a future very different from our present.

Please watch your step as you leave the vehicle and step on the moving walkway.  

The composers of this song created a perfect statement of the triumph and potential of modern (e.g. 1960's) chemistry and sings the praises of a new hero, the industrial chemist.  The song is called "Miracles from Molecules" and it was composed by the Sherman Brothers (1) for the Walt Disney Company.

      Miracles from molecules are dawning every day
      Discoveries for happiness in a fabulous array!
      A never ending search is on, by men who dare and plan,
      Making modern miracles from molecules for man!

      Every atom is a world, an infinity unfurled,
      A world of inner space without an end!
      A world of mystery, of endless energy,
      With treasures more than man can ever spend!

      Miracles from molecules, around us everywhere,
      There are miracles from molecules, in the earth, the sea, the air!
      Now men with dreams are furthering what nature first began,
      Making modern miracles from molecules for man!

      Making modern miracles from molecules for man! 

The song encapsulates the early 1960's vision of the future and the promise of a world with unlimited energy, and new materials that solve previously unsolvable problems, a world without limitations, amen. This was a  vision of hope when some would despair in a world of poverty, war and the threat of nuclear destruction.  It was for all of us, the worldwide community of Americans of whatever nation, all citizens of this new and synthetic world that was right around the corner.

Of course you had to be 12 years old to believe in such a thing, and a naive 12 years old at that.

But at least it was a vision of a better world, and stated with total sincerity, in a large-scale corporate marketing world exposition sort of way.

Today, do we hear a similar refrain from the promise of nanotechnology?   Perhaps, but they don't have a catchy song yet.

Get on the moving walkway and follow the arrow to your future.

A simulation of the complete attraction with the official soundtrack, is below.  This song is part of the post-show and it starts at approximately at approximately 8 minutes, 20 seconds into this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA3uFkF1A9o

My previous post on the Adventure Through Inner Space is below.

http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-mighty-microscope-recreated.html

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(1) Richard and Robert Sherman composed a tremendous number of songs for the Walt Disney Company, for both films and theme parks.   Not only "Miracles for Molecules", but also the lead song from the Carousel of Progress as well as It's a Small World.  Both of these will be subjects of their own post.  A Wikipedia page for these two is at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Brothers

The Strange Case of the Bye Bye Birdie (1963) Blue Screen Photography

[This post should be rewritten, there are two different  topics.  The first topic is how digital has increased the volume of visual effects by increasing the range within which the effects can be used, and a second post about what happens when things dont work and a classic example of using the shot anyway.]

[As an addendum to this little note, I want to remind my readers that we are talking about 1963 here, or more likely, 1962.   When I talk about blonde hair and moving cameras and pulling mattes, please recall that there is no tracking technology at the time (that I am aware of) and none of the work that has been done since then to electronically or digitally pull a matte from blonde hair.  I will do a later post on this topic,]

The coming of digital visual effects and the use of computer animation at the expense of the traditional arts may not have eliminated poverty or improved society dramatically, but it has had a notable impact on the filmmaking production process. It has done so in a number of ways, but mostly by greatly increasing the volume of work that can be done with these techniques by lowering the skill level required to execute them. Ironically, using computers has not reduced the cost of these techniques, using computers always increases costs, but it did dramatically increase the volume of shots that could use these techniques and in many cases eased the restrictions with which these techniques had to be used.

When First Secretary Joseph Stalin spoke at SIGGRAPH he said, "Quantity has a quality all its own" referring not to tank production, as some believe, but to volume production of digital visual effects. 

In the bad old days, a film was greatly restricted in its use of special optical technologies and other techniques in their production process. All films would use optical techniques for opening titles, end credits, and fades and dissolves. It used to be that the film editor acted as the visual effects supervisor, in a certain way, for a film, or most films. On top of these seemingly mundane but actually extremely important uses, a few films would make use of exotic technologies such as optical compositing, rear screen projection, and paintings on glass and other such special processes if the story and the studio permitted. A very few films and even fewer filmmakers would make these technologies part of their oeuvre, and then we might have a Hitchcock or a Disney, and films like North by Northwest, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Forbidden Planet or Mary Poppins.

Just wanted to say goodbye !

If you examine these films I suspect you will be surprised by the very small number of visual effects shots that are actually in those films. You may also be surprised by the way the limitations of the art and craft of visual effects informed some of the creative decisions. We will showcase some of these brilliant uses of this technology back in the day when you had to know something to use them successfully and couldn't just do whatever the fuck all you wanted and expect someone to fix it later.

Here are two examples of the kinds of restrictions that I am referring to: (a) the camera should not move during certain kinds of shots, or should move only in a very constrained way, because you are going to have to create other elements and those elements will also have to track with the camera and that will be annoying, difficult and expensive and (b) do not put someone with blonde or red hair in front of a blue screen because it is extremely hard, and often impossible, to pull a good, partial density (e.g. the matte is semi transparent) matte for it using the chemical blue screen process.

But whatever you do, do not put a blonde or red head in front of a blue screen while moving the camera. That would be a really crazy thing to do.

So what happened when someone ignored these guidelines and the shot didn't work?

There are three approaches and only three as far as I know: (1) cut the shot from the movie, (2) spend a lot of money trying to fix it and edit as best you can around it, or (3) use it anyway and pretend you always meant to do that.

It was in reference to this third approach that Georges Danton advised the Assemblee Legislative in 1792 saying "Il nous faut de l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!", which means something like "What we need is audacity, then more audacity, always audacity!"

Consider by way of example of this third approach the fascinating and not completely understood case of the opening of Bye Bye Birdie (1963).

This film is an early 60s repurposing of a Broadway musical that fictionally transforms the real-life draft of Elvis Presley into the US Army into a parable about how one can spin any adversity into a cheap publicity stunt. The film has a number of entertaining songs and a spectacular performance by the 22 year old Ann-Margret as the teenage love interest and ingenue.

The film opens with Ann-Margret in classic 1950s High School drag attacking the camera and belting out the title song with all the energy and enthusiasm you could ask for.  She sings those immortal words:

         Bye bye Birdie! I'm gonna miss you so.
         Bye bye Birdie. Why'd you have to go?
         No more sunshine! Its followed you away.
         I'll cry, Birdie, till you're home to stay!

        I'll miss the way you smile, as always just for me
        And each and every night, I'll write you faithfully!
        Bye bye Birdie, its awful hard to bear,
        Bye bye Birdie! Guess I'll always care!

        Guess I'll always care !
        Guess I'll always care !

(See the sequence on youtube.  You want the first 1:15 seconds only.   The rest is from the end of the movie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t3cBTb3xPc)

It may not be Shakespeare but Ann-Margret is so completely drop dead gorgeous and talented and wonderful and I think the sequence is very entertaining.  I can just imagine the director filled with enthusiasm saying: "Oh I have an idea, while we are doing this shot, how about adding a fan offstage to blow her hair around a little, and lets make sure she turns around facing away from the camera to show her hair off, oh yes, and Ann?  Could you shake your head around a lot so we can see your fabulous hair?  Thanks thats great!"

Just try to pull a matte for this hair, you idiots!

Do you notice something odd about this shot?  Something about the background color?  Its rather blue, don't you think?

The story that is reported is that the director, George Sidney, was so taken by Ann-Margret, who was not at the time a well-known star, that he proposed to the studio that they write a song for her and use it at the front and end of the movie. The studio declined so Sidney paid for the shoot himself, spending a reported 60,000 $US. When the movie opened and Ann-Margret was famous, the studio reimbursed Sidney. The song used the music of another song from the play that was not used in the movie version, with new lyrics written for the purpose of opening and closing the movie. 

The unconfirmed story is that Sidney planned to composite her against more newspaper / news footage of Birdie going into the army so he shot against blue screen.  But, so the story goes,  he gave up the idea of compositing the sequence since it would have been too expensive (and I doubt he would have been very happy with the results).   I have a vision in my mind of the effects people called in to review the scene and looking at it on the movieola and smiling grimly every time Ms. Margret shakes her head at the camera and her hair flies around, thinking to themselves, who is going to tell the director the bad news?

So I am guessing that the director said something like: "Fuck it, no one will be looking at the background anyway, they will be looking at Ann-Margret.   Just cut it in and no one will notice."

And I think that was the right decision. 

As far as I know, this is the only major bluescreen sequence in a movie that just uses the bluescreen photography as is as if they meant to shoot it that way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bye_Bye_Birdie_(film)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056891/

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Revised 1-15-2013

Schadenfreude! Schadenfreude!

Schadenfreude (pronounced:  shah-den-freud) is that amazing word from German that refers to the pleasure one gets from the misfortune of others.

The recent event at the Hollywood Bowl where 18,000 people sang along with the Sound of Music has inspired me to document a poem/song that I wrote in NY after some particularly spectacular and bloody incident between senior vice presidents at Viacom in the mid-1990s.

It is to the tune of Edelweiss from The Sound of Music by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Schadenfreude!  Schadenfreude!
Its a pleasure to beat you.

          Black and blue,
          I told you

Its a pleasure to hurt you!

(with feeling)

Down the toilet your career will go!
          Career will go!
          Forever!

(slowly and with wistfulness)

Schadenfreude, Schadenfreude.
Its a pleasure to hurt you.

(c) MW 1995 all rights reserved

A picture of Christopher Plummer as Captain George Ritter von Trapp singing Edelweiss.

The post about the "Sing-A-Long Sound of Music":
http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2012/09/sing-long-sound-of-music.html

Sing-A-Long Sound of Music

One more time I have evidence that I am deeply embedded into the collective unconsciousness of popular culture without realizing it.   I think something is completely obscure and then it turns out that it is no less than the very topic of a mass movement.

A friend has posted on facebook a picture he took at the recent "Sing-A-Long Sound of Music" in which 18,000 people went to the Hollywood Bowl to sing along with Maria and Captain v. Trapp.

Could this just be a coincidence, that I would write my post about The Sound of Music and its relationship to submarine history and that then this event would happen?    Is this more proof of the lattice of causality that underlies the apparent coincidences of the material world?

Although I do have other situations that do strongly indicate the apparent presence of the lattice of causality, I doubt very much if any of the participants at the Sing-A-Long were aware of Captain v. Trapp's immense importance to the history of submarines.  But maybe that doesn't matter, it occurs to me, maybe his importance to submarine history influenced their behavior without their conscious knowledge?

[An aside: the Hollywood Bowl claims that their screen is the largest outdoor motion picture screen in the world.   A few years ago I saw a sequence from the Sound of Music at the Academy that was projected in 70MM from the original 70mm negative.   It was completely amazing and much better, read my lips, much better by an order of magnitude than the best digital projection I have seen.   Obviously progress is not about making things better.]

Here is the link to Jim Hillin's picture on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151187914489312&set=a.462289734311.253257.573349311&type=1&comment_id=7932189

And the Hollywood Bowl event:
http://www.hollywoodbowl.com/tickets/sing-long-sound-of-music/2011-09-24

Jim Hillin's picture from the event itself:

My original post about Maria, the Captain and the submarine is at:
http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-baron-novititate-and-submarine-in.html

The Baron, the Novitiate and the Submarine in American Musical Theatre

This story is going to need a little buildup before it starts going, so please bear with me.   It will all become clear, eventually.

As cynical members of our modern society, we have learned through experience that many of the things we are told through the media and education system are at best simplifications, and often just outright fabrications. "The winner writes the history", and it is usually, nearly always, a self-serving version. But every once in a while you come across a story that you just know has to be a fabrication, completely implausible, and utterly improbable. Oh come on, people, you think, give me a break.

The particular work I am referring to is a well-known play by Rodgers & Hammerstein, "The Sound of Music", which later became a successful film. It has been said that society can be divided into two very broad categories, those who like Rodgers & Hammerstein and those who find them a little hard to take. I fall into the latter category for the most part and never much cared for "The Sound of Music", even though it is beautifully photographed in TODD -AO, has some very entertaining songs and, of course, Julie Andrews is completely perfect.

The problem is the plot. Not even a child could believe this story. "An Austrian naval officer, a war hero and a widower, has become alienated from his life and his family after the death of his wife. A young woman who is training to be a nun from a local convent is hired to be the teacher of his seven children who are growing up without their mother. But as it turns out, all of them, from the Baron down to his youngest child, knows how to sing. He falls in love with this teacher, they start singing together, the family is reunited, they become internationally known as a folk singing troupe, the Trapp Family Singers, and they have to run for their lives when the National Socialists annex Austria in 1938. They live happily ever after."

Oh please, spare me, I thought. Obviously this was some sort of pleasant fantasy, a structure that one could naturally hang some songs onto, have a romance, a little danger, a happy ending. Austria doesn't really even have a navy, being a landlocked country (just showing my regrettable ignorance of history at the time) and it never occurred to me in a million years that this story might be even partially true, let alone true in all major points. In fact, the story is not only true, its possible they even toned it down a little bit.

There the matter would have remained except that I believe that as a well-rounded member of our society,  I have a responsibility to study the fascinating history of submersibles and semi-submersibles with diligence. What could be more relevant and helpful for living in our modern and complicated world than the study of this technology? And what else could lead to such an improvement in character and morals?

Many navies and individuals contributed to the invention of the submarine from the mid-19th century on, including people from  England, Germany, France, Austria, Russia, Italy, Ireland, North America and others. Their professions included at least one priest, a well-known writer of science-based fiction (Jules Verne), a shoemaker, a wagon-maker, an army officer, many naval officers, a professor of mathematics and an innkeeper. Important supporters in the very early days, when no one was sure if this idea would ever really work, include the Irish Republican Army and the Confederate States of America.  Robert Fulton, an artist and inventor living in Paris, proposed the concept of the submarine to Napoleon and was awarded a commission to study the idea. 

Patience, we are almost there.

Then one day I came across an aspect of this story that had been completely unknown to me.  One of the major participants in WW1 had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of course.   For some reason it had never occurred to me that they had a navy, but they did.  Although it was small, it was apparently well-regarded and they had looked closely into the submarine and built a very small fleet to explore the idea.   Although their fleet was small, and their equipment primitive, they were led by men with spirit and intelligence.  And they had an impact, apparently.   One of their captains was particularly successful, invented many techniques which would later be used by all sides in WW2, and famous for being the first submariner to sink a major enemy surface combatant by moonlight.   He was from a family with a history of service to the emperors of the Austro-Hungarian empire and was a member of their nobility.   A dashing and handsome submarine commander, he was decorated and promoted, and his name was Georg Ritter von Trapp.

"von Trapp", I thought, "Hmm, that name seems familiar somehow. How do I know that name?"

So I looked him up, and as I read, my blood ran cold with horror.  It was all true.  All of it.

OK, so it wasn't ALL true, but it was mostly all true.   Rodgers & Hammerstein had, it turned out, dramatized the departure from Austria and in reality it was no where near as exciting.

I was devastated by the realization that Hollywood had come very close to accurately portraying this story.  If you can't trust Hollywood, of all institutions, to lie to you, who can you trust?

Those of you who have had enough of this story can stop right here.  Those who want the details of this heartwarming and improbable story should read on.

Captain von Trapp had married for love a woman from England named Agathe Whitehead, the daughter of the man who had invented the torpedo in England. She had come to Austria to commission von Trapp's first command, the U-Boat U-6, fell in love and married him. They had seven children. After the war, one of those children became ill with scarlet fever and Agathe caught it from her and died. Georg Ritter von Trapp (the "Ritter von" is the title of nobility and means "knight") was unemployed and unemployable because after the war, the Austro-Hungarian empire was broken up and Austria was not allowed to have a navy. Thus von Trapp was a man without a profession. To make matters worse, the family fortune had been lost in a bank failure during the depression after the war. He had a very sick child, and many other children, who did not have a mother. He was financially devastated and heartbroken at the loss of his wife. He moved his family into the top floor of their house, and rented the rooms below to students to support his family. Eventually, since his sick child could not attend school easily, he decided to hire a tutor from the local convent, and educate his family at home.

You know what happens next. 

The teacher he hired was Maria Augusta Kutschera who had been born on a train and was an orphan by the time she was seven years old. She had graduated from the State Teachers College for Progressive Education in Vienna at the age of 18. She entered Nonnburg Abbey in Salzberg as a postulant intending to become a nun.

She lived with the family and became very attached to her students.  Georg and Maria fell in love.  As part of a well-rounded education, this being Austria between the wars, music was part of the children's education.  Apparently they were talented.  When Georg made an honest women out of Maria, in other words, when they got married, their first child arrived two and a half months later.   If you know what I mean.   They had three children together, making a grand total of ten children.

Somehow the well known German soprano, Lotte Lehmann, had heard the family sing and suggested that they should start performing. The Austrian Chancellor heard them on radio and invited them to come to Vienna and give a performance. They were able to get a booking manager and agent and toured parts of Europe, the United States and Canada.

In a review, the New York Times said

There was something unusually lovable and appealing about the modest, serious singers of this little family aggregation as they formed a close semicircle about their self-effacing director for their initial offering, the handsome Mme. von Trapp in simple black, and the youthful sisters garbed in black and white Austrian folk costumes enlivened with red ribbons. It was only natural to expect work of exceeding refinement from them, and one was not disappointed in this.

To conclude the story, the National Socialists offered von Trapp a commission in the German Navy, but he declined.  The way the Austro-Hungarian empire was broken up, the region that von Trapp was born in was now a part of Italy and thus he had Italian citizenship.  The movie has them dramatically hiking out of Austria through the mountains, but in real life they took a train like normal people.   Eventually they settled in Vermont and started a lodge which is still in business. Their descendents live in this country, so far as I know.

In conclusion, I think that this anecdote clearly demonstrates the importance of the study of the history of submarines, and its value in understanding American musical theatre.


Pictures of Captain Georg, Maria and one of his submarines.

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The lodge that Georg and Maria started when they came to this country is still in business, see  http://www.trappfamily.com/story


For more on the history of submarines in the navy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, see
http://uboat.net/history/wwi/part4.htm


Captain Ritter von Trapp wrote a short book on some of his experiences as a captain of a submarine. A Google Books preview is at
http://books.google.com/books/about/To_the_Last_Salute.html?id=8ADDLyBL500C