Self-Portrait in NYC

My bedroom in NYC. 

Notice the Hudson River outside the window.

I think I look like a cartoon character in this picture.

Richard Yuricich on Event Horizon

Richard Yuricich, ASC is one of my favorite people in the world.   Here he is on the set at Pinewood and in London on the movie Effects Horizon (1997).    As the date back on my little camera says, this must have been 1996.

 

Somehow Richard got me to London to help design "blood in space".  RY is a stickler for detail and he had accumulated zero G fluid photography from the Soviet space program.   We had lunch at the Commissary at Pinewood Studios, where Hitchcock ate every day.  I doubt there has been any production that has treated me with so much courtesy.




Effects Horizon on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119081/combined

Joan Collins and Kelley Ray on Starship Troopers

These are my friends Joan Collins and Kelley Ray who were at the time representing SONY Imageworks on Starship Troopers at MASS.ILLUSION in Lenox, MA.

Not only had MASS.ILLUSION collected a fabulous crew doing great work, it was in a drop dead gorgeous part of the world.

I was only on one small part of the project, but it was one of the most enjoyable projects I have ever had.  For another post on this complicated production, see here.  This production was a classic of the situation where a production can be rocky but individuals, in this case me, can have a wonderful time.

Kelley is now efx supervisor on an episodic show called Vampire Diaries, and I don't know what Joan is doing, but last I heard she had several films that were about to start.

Before Joan left Lenox the last time, I bought her dinner and tried to talk her into doing some project with me, I think.  I still remember the restaurant in Lenox, MA.

This must have been about 1997.

Vampire Diaries on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1405406/

Shinae Tassia in New York

Shinae in New York City looking enigmatic.   The dots on the window that look like water marks on the photograph are actually rain drops on the window of the taxicab.   Shinae is my favorite person of Korean-Sicilian descent and worked at the time for the Museum of Natural History in New York.

Shinae wore her first dress (she tells me) to the opening of the Rose Center / Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History on the fake millenium, Dec 31, 1999.   As we were walking around the museum we were suddenly circled by an older gentleman looking completely perfect in a tuxedo and his long-suffering wife/girlfriend, taking dozens of photographs of us.  He was obviously a professional photographer and as he documented Shinae,  he exclaimed "Like a flower!  Like a beautiful flower!  How Lovely!", etc.   As fast as he had appeared he started to fade into the darkness at the Museum.... I called after him and asked who he was with.

He answered from a distance fading away "I'm with the Times ...".   He was, apparently, the very well-known society photographer for the NY Times.

If a picture of Shinae had appeared in the society pages of the NY Times all the other women at the Museum would have plotzed in envy.  

No such photograph ever appeared to the best of my knowledge.

[Scott Anderson suggests that this might have been the famous Bill Cunningham, and it might have been.  I am checking with someone who knows].

SIGGRAPH 2013

SIGGRAPH 2013 is this week of course and I am desperately trying to finish a dozen things before I go.  I hope to see you all there and feel free to text me or call me at 323 833 9087 to arrange a place to meet.  Reading email will probably be hit and miss for that week.

Civics and Intelligence: Does the US Government have the Constitutional Right to Keep Secrets

It is commonly asserted that "the people have the right to know".

In other words, that if the government is keeping a secret is that by definition in violation of the law. Does the government have the right to keep certain types of secrets legally and constitutionally? What have the courts ruled on this matter? What are the precedents in American history. What did the writers of the constitution have in mind on this topic.

The following is a legal and historical analysis by John Warner. The article is reprinted from the CIA's Studies in Intelligence.

You should read this 20 page paper in order to understand the arguments that can be made for the government keeping secrets from its people and under what circumstances they may do so.

If you do not feel like reading the entire 20 pages, read the first 5 or so, which goes over some examples from American history in the very early days.

The document can be found online in several different forms at

http://research.archives.gov/description/7283238

Introduction to a Course on Civics and The Intelligence Community

My response to the Ed Snowden affair as it has played out so far is to be appalled at the level of knowledge of my friends and fellow citizens about how their government works.  So what I plan to do here is to create a very time efficient course in civics and intelligence based on documents publically available on the Internet.

Please read a few more paragraphs before you completely give up on this idea.

The course will be

    (a) select, it will be as short as possible to make as good use of your time as possible,

    (b) based on primary sources available on the Internet

    (c) focused on background, history and nuance intended to make your beliefs and arguments
    robust (see note 1)

What this course will NOT be

    (d) it is not intended to change your mind on fundamental issues, whether our government is
    moral or immoral, good or bad.  You already have your mind made up, I am pretty sure.

But it will try to help explain such things as

    (e) what do people mean when they say that Iran-Contra was illegal but what Snowden revealed

    was probably legal (even if it may merely prove to you that the laws need to be changed)?

    (f) even if what Snowden revealed was legal, in some technical sense of the word, what does it

    mean to say that we wish to challenge the constitutionality of those laws (which is one way to

    change the laws, but by no means the only way).

Furthermore, you may even understand certain nuances like the following:

    (g) whatever Snowden's motivation, he should not have had access to the wide breadth of
     information and there is something very wrong here, very wrong indeed, and people in the
     intelligence community, right or wrong, must be reeling.

Whether you like it or not, and I dont really care, (g) is going to affect our country at least as much as any of the others, so you may as well spend a few minutes trying to understand it.

Or not. Whatever you want.

Furthermore, I am going to try and explain to you some history that motivates their behavior. Now, I happen to think that if this behavior was exposed to a wider audience and not merely voted on by the elite (which is the very basis of our government, it is not a direct democracy, it is a so-called representative democracy for better or worse), then the American people might very well vote against this behavior.  I wouldn't vote against that behavior, mind you, I would support it wholeheartedly, but that is just me.

Finally I have one more important goal, and it is to try and convince you of the following:

    (h) although we may not know the details of what is happening in this world, in broad strokes
    there is quite a bit that you can know about what is going on, and this information can be
    used to inform your beliefs and what you tell your elected representatives, not that they
    care what you think because you are not rich, but that is another problem.

What I mean by that is this: you did not need Snowden to know most of this, at least the part I have read about. No shock or surprise should have been generated (except for maybe a few details, and even those I am told were already made public but I did not notice).

Thus one result of our little course is to help you not be surprised in the future.

Now that is a worthwhile goal, isnt it?

I promise to make this as concise as I can, but you will be expected to spend about 1/2 hour a week reading documents I point you to, for maybe about 10 weeks.  This course will begin, intermittently, after SIGGRAPH.  The course will last longer than 10 weeks because I will not be able to work on it every week.

Thank you, or maybe you should be thanking me.

____________________________________________

1. The classic example of this approach is the a pro-arms-control group called the Federation of American Scientists (www.fas.org) which has worked in support of treaties limiting or eliminating nuclear weapons for a very long time. Their approach is that in order to argue cogently for arms control, that you must be well-informed on the issues of nuclear and conventional arms, and thus they have (or had) one of the best web sites on the internet for researching these things. Unfortunately, the best parts of this database has been turned over for maintenance to www.globalsecurity.org, and the only problem with that is that they charge a fee to review that database for more than a few documents. If you were interested in that topic, I think it is worth their nominal fee. Those of us who are impoverished in America can not even consider it, and therefore can not participate in our democracy.  Which is intentional. 

Further Issues With Hiring More Experienced Workers (MEWs)

[updated 7/27/2013]

In a previous post (see here), we discussed issues that may become apparent when you hire a more experienced worker, or MEW as they are known in the literature, such as their tendency to fail to fall for your lies and a stupid desire to learn from experience. These are bad enough, but there are others that can be added to the list and we have some of them here.

I should first mention that not all experienced workers suffer from these character flaws, but the very possibility that they might should be enough to see that MEWs are never hired.

1. More experienced workers tend to mutter to themselves.

After all they are subjected to the most obvious and abusive ageism by your younger workers on a daily basis, they are likely to have some sort of verbal response. This is unacceptable and any MEW that mutters to themselves should immediately be fired.

2. More expereinced workers tend to exhibit diversity in opinions and ideas.

The most efficient workplace is one in which there is no dissent because the workers are cut from the same conforming cloth, everyone knows that. Unanimity should come not through discussion of the best approach, but because the worker units believe that there is only one way, their way, what they have been programmed to believe, thus they can proceed without discomfort or thought. By having more experienced workers who may know other ways or have contrary opinions based on genuine experience, you potentially open your organization to inefficient discussion and debate.

Remember, debate is weakness. Unthinking unanimity is strength!  

3. More experienced workers after being subjected to abuse might show some sign of anger at being treated like garbage.

Any who do so should be fired at once. Management should have no fear of being subjected to any penalty by government because the government supports ageism in all ways, that is obvious. Thus MEWs can be fired with impunity.

4. An MEW might be better educated than the "stupid morons" (1) companies hire as management and thus this management might suffer from insecurity which might affect their ability to be stupid.

Imagine the poor 20 or 30 something management, stupid and shallow as they are, spitting teeth in frustration if they had to deal with a MEW who might actually use a big word that our stupid management did not understand. Oh Gods! Forbid this gross unjustice !

I think we have established without doubt that our government is right in supporting ageism in all its forms and that an older and more experienced worker must never be hired.

_____________________________________

1. A "stupid moron" is an innovative personal insult and a colloquialism that is not in common usage in English, but was innovated by the author to communicate a higher degree of "moron"-icity than one might normally experience.   English is a Germanic language and it is a natural part of the language process to create new terms from existing words to extend the language.   Thus "stupid moron" is obviously a way of saying "a particularly unintelligent person of low intelligence".

Joni Mitchell and the Perception of Small Differences in Musical Performance

[being written 7/16/2013]

This will be part of the Los Angeles in the 60s, 70s, and 80s topic, when that gets organzied]

It seems to be a human capability to listen to music and perceive tiny differences in performance. We are able to do this even on music they have not heard recently and even on music of considerable length. Who has not had the experience of hearing a song they knew well on the radio and then suddenly realize that this version is slightly different, it turns out to be a different version of the song never released, or from a demo made by the band, or for the European release, perhaps a live performance somewhere.

This fabulous demonstration of signal processing and memory storage and acquisition must have a purpose, the sincere but naive Darwinist, exclaims. Perhaps. But it could also be the accidental result of some other capability or capabilities that evolved and was selected because it was useful for some other reason or reasons entirely. Perhaps it is part of how we recognize when we are home, audio being such an important sense. Perhaps it is part of the amazing "friend or foe" recognition circuitry that lets us know if someone is of the tribe or not of the tribe, or whether the ritual is being performed correctly. Whatever it is, it seems remarkable how well it works.

For whatever reason, if there is a reason, that we have this capability, I have a story about it from when I lived at the beach and worked at the RAND Corporation.

In the 1970s I lived at the ocean in a rent-controlled apartment complex called the Seacastle Apartments. The building is famous for being a well known hotel built in the 1920s (I think), then a run-down dive near the beach during the 1940s and 1950s, and finally received a million dollar grant from HUD (Housing and Urban Development) to fix it up and turn it into low-income housing in the 1960s. The owner took the $1,000,000 and went to Mexico and HUD ended up owning the building by default. This being Los Angeles, I am pretty sure they tore it down to put up something so the rich could enjoy the view and get rid of the worthless poor and middle class people who were there before.[Correction... it is still there, sortof.  It has been turned into something called blusantamonica.com, which are expensive townhouses for rich people.  They must have gutted the place to rebuild it].  I lived there in a cave, very inexpensively, and worked at RAND.

A Google Earth view of the Seacastle Apartments now turned into Townhouses for Rich People

There were apartments in the front that faced the Pacific ocean. Not fancy, and very tiny for the most part, their view was unbelievable. Very, very difficult to get one of those apartments, and when you had one you did not want to give it up. This is in Santa Monica 1/2 block south of the Santa Monica Pier and on the Promenade, the real Promenade, not the shopping center, the walk path in front of the beach.

There were many colorful stories about this building some of which might even have been true. Of course the HUD story above is one of them, but there are also stories of the period when "ladies of the night" worked the building in the 1950s, of famous surfers who had lived there, and famous musicians and writers who could not afford even the low rent, and so forth. One story was that Joni Mitchell still had an apartment there, on the 2nd floor, in the front, or perhaps a boyfriend did, or perhaps she kept a poor boyfriend there who was also a musician, a starving one. The stories differed. I never believed any of them. It was all just local color to me, worth repeating, but very little chance of being true. Or maybe it was true once, long ago, but no longer.

I don't remember why I was able to be in front of the Seacastle to watch a sunset, as I usually worked at RAND from noon to 2AM or so. So this was probably on a weekend as I had started to take one day a week off, as I noticed that seemed to help my work in the long run. Whatever the reason, I was sitting on the wall between the promenade and the beach and watching a spectacular sunset, which probably meant that the Santa Monica mountains were burning down. A fire was always good for enhancing sunsets, adding all that debris from the burned houses of Malibu millionaires would always contribute to our sunset quality. They should burn Malibu houses down regularly as it would improve our quality of life.

It is the nature of apartment buildings of this type that you can hear everything, and I could hear that someone in the front was playing music. It was a Joni Mitchell album and I could hear it in the background and I did not pay any attention. It was not very loud, you could barely hear it above the sound of the ocean. I knew her albums well and I had seen her perform live on several occassions and I was very familiar with her music.

Joni Mitchell live on the Johnny Cash Show 1969

I was watching the sunset and not paying any attention when I realized that something was wrong. The music was different somehow, not much, but different. It was definitely Joni Mitchell, and it was one of her songs, but this was a performance I had never heard before. I am not sure if it was the phrasing, or the pacing, or something about the guitar accompaniment, or what it was. Her voice was very soft in the background and the sound of the ocean intermittantly overwhelmed her singing.   Whatever this was, I thought, it was very well done, her voice sounded wonderful, completely alive, as well as I had ever heard it.

I don't recall what songs she played, but it was early Joni Mitchell and to my memory it sounded similar to this one from the premiere of the Johnny Cash Show in 1969.

The music stopped in mid-stanza. She played guitar and seemed to be talking to someone. I couldn't really hear. The music started again in mid verse, then stopped, then switched to another song and she played for a few more minutes, pretty much just playing around, and then she stopped.

Joni Mitchell was upstairs, behind me, on the 2nd floor somewhere, watching the sunset with someone and the window was open and she was just practicing or more likely just goofing off.   The reason she sounded so good, of course, was that it wasn't a recording.

I listened for a few minutes and then it stopped and I never heard her again.

So you see, sometimes the crazy stories you hear are true.

Tarkovsky Was A True Friend of Socialism! His Films Weigh Many Kilograms!

[I have had two comments from friends.  Tom Barron saw some version in 1973 as a student at CalArts thus proving that whatever I saw in 1976 was certainly not the premiere in Los Angeles, or maybe they just claimed it was as a way of selling tickets.   

[Josh Pines of Technicolor tells me that Solaris in the 3.5 hour version is a masterpiece of the cinematic form and that I do not know what I am talking about.  Well, he may be right.  Or it may be that the difference between 3.5 and 8 hours is the difference between heaven and hell.  Film editing, you know, a part of the cinematic art form?  I stand by what I saw, which was complete fucking torture to the 23 or 24 year old who saw it.  That said, I volunteer to watch it again, an approved version of some length, particularly if it is on DVD or otherwise digital so I can skip around to the good parts].

[Josh also tells me that he can find no evidence of an 8 hour version of Solaris. This is very odd, and requires more research.   I will either have to find a library with the monthly Nuart notices back to 1976 or find a film expert online, or a relevant web site to post my question.  This is not a retraction, but it is a notice that there has been some doubt expressed that an 8 hour version existed.  I think I saw it but it was a hideously painful experience of unbelievable and unrestricted boredom, and very long ago.  I do not usually misremember things, but I sometimes misunderstand what I am seeing and thus remember something that did not happen as I recall it, a subtle point.  I have been known to confuse when something happened, e.g. what year it happened.  It may take a while, but the story of whatever it is I think I saw will become clear eventually and when I find out I will update this post.  ]   

I remember hearing in college that in a socialist society, there will be no racism, sexism or poverty. Even at the tender age of 17 I had a feeling that what I was hearing was total bullshit. But had that idealist speaking at that event said that "Under socialism, and with Marxist Leninist thought, the dialectic process will result in films that are devoted to the class consciousness of the proletariat, therefore the only judgement of a film that will be possible or necessary will be a quantitative measure. The film will by definition be "good", the only question is how much good, and that can be objectively measured by its length or weight".

This is an argument that clearly has merit and we are forced to consider it.

In the world of Science Fiction cinema, for many years there were only a few films that could be taken seriously by an elitist film snob, and I promise you that did not include "It Came From Outer Space", even though that worthy 1953 film was released in 3D which as we all know is a very essential quality of any important film made today, or in *any* period of the history of the cinema.

No, there were only a handful of films that could be taken seriously by an elitist and that could also be labelled science fiction, which was and to some extent still is a ghetto devoid of "serious" art as that is judged by those who judge. For example very few, almost no films, which were science fiction could expect to be written up in Cahiers du Cinema. But first among those would be Solaris (1972) by Andrei Tarkovsky.

Was Tarkovsky inspired by the great film "It Came From Outer Space"?

Solaris (1972) was the instant darling of the intelligentsia. Anything by Tarkovsky was, of course, but Solaris was acknowledged to be a world class masterpiece by all who saw it.  Sadly, very few outside Moscow, Berlin or Paris were able to see it.   In only a few years, a very short period of time by the standard of the day, this film did show in two cities in the United States, New York and Los Angeles.  I attended what was either the Los Angeles premiere or within a few days of that in its first run at the Nuart Theatre in West Los Angeles.

And yet, I can tell you that many people who think they have seen this landmark film have not done so. They have been fooled, fed an inferior product by well-meaning but fundamentally misguided individuals who have fallen from the Sociallist path. Many who think they have seen Solaris have actually seen the George Clooney remake. Yes, the film is so fabulous that it has earned its own remake, a true Hollywood compliment.

But no, you say, you actually saw the Tarkovsky original. Perhaps. How do you know that you really saw the Tarkovsky original? Can you objectively judge whether you saw the original, or some degraded lesser form designed for the corrupt American market which is so very concerned with the number of showings they can get of the film in a day?

I am just going to walk around in a big circle until I die !

Perhaps instead of seeing the original Tarkovsky film, you instead saw the pathetic worthless 2.5 hour version. No? I am glad to hear that, it would not be possible to squeeze Tarkovsky into 2.5 hours any more than we could squeeze our consciousness into 800 polygons.

Well, then perhaps you saw the appalling travesty that was the 4 hour version that toured the United States, that center of artistic compromise? And you think you should be proud of yourself for seeing this? Don't be so proud; what you saw was a very shortened version made for the kiddie market and others of short attention span.

I see, you perhaps saw the very limited run of the 6 hour version of this ultimate masterpiece? I am sorry to break this to you, but essential, even fundamental elements of the actual film were left out, to accomodate the need for Capitalist pacing and to compete with action adventure films starring Bruce Willis.

Can you say boring?   Ok, now say boring for 8 hours.

Sadly, we must laugh at the futility of those who saw these shortened versions, for they have not truly seen Tarkovsky's vision. What those of us present in Los Angeles and New York saw was the full, complete masterwork of 8 hours, untouched, unbroken, perfect, not a single frame of film removed which would have immediately and completely destroyed the aesthetics of this Socialist masterpiece!

What an experience it was.  Yes, even though it was in 1976 I can remember every moment of it. Totally captivated by the filmmakers mastery of technique, I was spellbound in tingly anticipation that at any moment something might happen, something, anything, might happen.   Please, could something please happen?   Perhaps some wild action such as an actor making a cup of coffee?  Anything, please, I don't care, please God make something happen in this movie!  Solaris had not less than 10, perhaps as much as 15 minutes of action jam packed into those 8 hours.   Compared to Tarkovsky, I thought, an Ingmar Bergman film would seem like one mad car chase after another.

I thought I was going to die of boredom.  This is your great intellectual Science Fiction masterpiece?, I thought to myself in the lobby, slamming down bad liquid caffeine and chocolate brownie units, trying desperately to stay awake.   Give me a one-eyed slime monster any day of the week, at least it isn't pretentious, just cheap.    

In terms of quantitative social realism, although I do not have the official numbers, we can say that this 8 hour masterpiece of the proletarian dialectic was so good that it measured not less than 13,167 meters in length and weighed not less than 97.956 kilograms thus proving Tarkovsky was a true friend of socialism!

I now have the exciting news that online friends of socialism and Tarkovsky may watch this masterpiece online: 

http://www.openculture.com/2010/07/tarkovksy.html

Solaris (1972) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069293/

It Came From Outer Space (1953) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045920/