James Doohan's last public appearance, last August at the Scotty convention. Astronaut Neil Armstrong at far right. Kowinski photo.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
R.I.P. James Doohan 1920-2005
James Doohan, Star Trek's beloved Scotty, died on July 20, the 36th anniversary of the first steps taken on another celestial body by a human being. Doohan's last public appearance was at a convention held in his honor last August in Hollywood.
At the benefit dinner held as part of that convention, Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, was a featured speaker. Addressing Doohan as his character Scotty, Armstrong said, "From one old engineer to another, thanks, mate."
That tribute is fitting today. Doohan was an actor who probably sacrificed a different kind of career to remain dedicated to Star Trek, its fans and its ideals. Like other members of the original cast, he had hard life experiences that informed his feelings about those Star Trek ideals. In his case it was war. He was seriously wounded in the D-Day landings in June 1944.
When I was interviewing various people associated with Star Trek for my New York Times article, just before and during the Scotty convention, everyone I asked spoke enthusiastically and warmly about Doohan. "I love Jimmy Doohan," LeVar Burton said flatly, as did director-writer Nicholas Meyer, and others. Jonathan Frakes said the same in an email, adding that he always had a great time with Doohan when they met at conventions.
By some sort of coincidence, I watched his TNG episode, "Relics," on DVD the night before his death. In fact, I watched it twice. Though known for many indelible moments in the series and the feature films, this was probably his best sustained performance on Star Trek.
Here is a link to my other photos from the Scotty convention. In that final gathering of the Enterprise crew, Nichelle Nichols concern for Doohan, and sadness over his condition, was most evident. My condolences to his family and friends. Those of us who knew him on the screen still have those moments, and are grateful for his presence and his spirit.
James Doohan, Star Trek's beloved Scotty, died on July 20, the 36th anniversary of the first steps taken on another celestial body by a human being. Doohan's last public appearance was at a convention held in his honor last August in Hollywood.
At the benefit dinner held as part of that convention, Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, was a featured speaker. Addressing Doohan as his character Scotty, Armstrong said, "From one old engineer to another, thanks, mate."
That tribute is fitting today. Doohan was an actor who probably sacrificed a different kind of career to remain dedicated to Star Trek, its fans and its ideals. Like other members of the original cast, he had hard life experiences that informed his feelings about those Star Trek ideals. In his case it was war. He was seriously wounded in the D-Day landings in June 1944.
When I was interviewing various people associated with Star Trek for my New York Times article, just before and during the Scotty convention, everyone I asked spoke enthusiastically and warmly about Doohan. "I love Jimmy Doohan," LeVar Burton said flatly, as did director-writer Nicholas Meyer, and others. Jonathan Frakes said the same in an email, adding that he always had a great time with Doohan when they met at conventions.
By some sort of coincidence, I watched his TNG episode, "Relics," on DVD the night before his death. In fact, I watched it twice. Though known for many indelible moments in the series and the feature films, this was probably his best sustained performance on Star Trek.
Here is a link to my other photos from the Scotty convention. In that final gathering of the Enterprise crew, Nichelle Nichols concern for Doohan, and sadness over his condition, was most evident. My condolences to his family and friends. Those of us who knew him on the screen still have those moments, and are grateful for his presence and his spirit.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Sunday, July 03, 2005
The Spielberg Spectacle: War of the Worlds Movie Reviewed
by William S. Kowinski
Steven Spielberg grew up in the 1950s: the era of Cold War cinema, bug-eyed monster movies and the first golden age of science fiction film. If he saw George Pal's "'>The War of the Worlds" when it first came out, he would have been no older than the little girl played by Dakota Fanning in his version, with the title shortened to "'>War of the Worlds." Or he might have seen it a little later, at a Saturday afternoon matinee, where generations-from Gene Roddenberry's childhood through Leonard Nimoy's to Spielberg's---first fell in love with the movies.
Some suggest that Spielberg wanted to make an alien invasion film in the 1970s but took it in a different direction in "'>Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Then he thought about it again, but decided to make his alien angelic for '>"E.T." and save the demons for "'>Poltergeist," which hit theatres the same year.
This time there's no question: the aliens are bad, and bent on destruction and domination. We know it must be true, because the lowest register Morgan Freeman can reach has told us this.
The central human relationship in the novel was a man alone trying to get back to his generic wife. In the film it was the love story, that paradigm of 50's sci-fi films, the Scientist and the Girl (sometimes the Beautiful Daughter of the Elder Scientist, sometimes a scientist herself, but in this case the preacher's daughter.)
But Spielberg already used a variation on this relationship for "Close Encounters," and virtually stole from the Pal film the key scene where the lovers (Richard Dreyfus and Melinda Dillon) fight through a crowd to reunite. This time the key relationship is a father and his children, principally his young daughter. The arc of the film is less about aliens than a man becoming a good father. He isn't actually any less lonely at the end (even though he's watched by his ex-wife's father, played by the scientist-hero of the Pal film, Gene Barry) but he's proven himself.
That seems to be the chief reason the aliens invaded. None other is really given. The Wells book is dripping with evolutionary and political metaphors and explanations. In the 50s it wasn't necessary: the aliens were the Soviets and Godless Communism, and everybody knew they were out to destroy and dominate us. In this film, we are supposed to believe that aliens from an unnamed place---but given the realities of the early 21st century, somewhere way outside our solar system---had planned this invasion for millions of years, had deliberately buried their fighting machines (I can almost hear the crewcut astronaut types in "'>2001" chuckling over their sandwiches on the moon, checking out the monoliths: "Deliberately buried, eh?") and shown up to be delivered into them in lightning bolts.
These aliens are shown to be insect-like beings who look a lot like, well, "'>Alien" aliens, but where is Ridley when you need her? They don't seem to talk to each other (telepathy perhaps), and they don't appear very bright. Still, they've managed to build these fantastic machines and travel interstellar space. And somehow they knew millions of years ago that they would need this planet. Maybe they could figure out that they were going to pollute their planet completely but couldn't figure out how to prevent it, which I suppose makes them a lot like us.
And having mastered space travel they neglected their studies in fundamental biology (yes, after months of hot air about how this one wasn't going to end the same old way, with the aliens killed by earth bacteria, the little things "which God in his wisdom put upon the earth," that's exactly the ending, with the crowding around the dying fighting machines very similar to the 1953 movie.) They made the mistakes timid tourists to Mexico avoid: they drank the water.
(The additional writing for the final Freeman voiceover was excellent, though.)
This being a Spielberg movie, the effects are terrific and the action is completely believable. You don't want to think too hard about the Tripods, how those long tentacle-like legs actually work (or why other aspects of them seem very machine-like but the tentacles don't), but they are great to look at. They, and especially the viewing devices, pay equal homage to the 1953 movie and to Wells. And the specific disasters have never quite been done like this---even the cars popping into the air, a la '>Superman and '>Independence Day, etc.--- seem a fresh well-integrated part of the action.
Besides the Wellsian tripods (although had Wells believed heavier-than-air flight was possible---he only let his Martians experiment with it---he probably would have made them fly), this movie conflates two minor characters in Wells' novel, and merges them in Tim Robbins. In the novel, the narrator shares a harrowing confinement surrounded by Martians, as in the film, with a semi-hysterical clergyman, and has a separate encounter with a character called the Artilleryman, who talks about resistance and rebellion but doesn't especially want to do anything about it. In a strong performance, Robbins combines them, and comes across predictably schizoid.
As for the politics of this movie, there are a couple of references to terrorists (both by children) and Robbins comment that occupiers never win (but he's crazy), so if you're keeping score on pro-Bush or anti-Bush it's kind of a wash. The scene in which people captured in giant scoops, to be turned apparently into fertilizer (Wells' Martians literally drank human blood; he had a thing about cannibalism), form a human chain to prevent Tom Cruise from being sucked up, was deftly done, with an understated "working together" message. But maybe it was all too understated. The screenwriter has earnestly announces he wrote an anti-war film, and specifically an anti-Iraq war film, but, well...
The Pal film had a lot of religious symbolism, which is part of what made it frightening to people in the 50s: at first it seemed not even God could stop the Martians. Churches were prominent in the final sequence. But in this film, the first machine erupts from under the street, and the first building it topples appears to be a church, but that's about it.
The Pal film showed us real people endangered, even if they happened to be scientists, but more of the bigger picture: governments, military strategies, etc. Wells' novel follows two fairly interchangeable narrators (brothers in different places) but his narrator thinks in scientific terms, so he has theories about what he's seeing. This movie is about a working class guy who loves cars more than people, going through an ordeal, pursued by monsters that keep reminding him of his internal and behavioral inadequacies, i.e. he was a lousy parent, and probably a lousy husband (although his ex-wife clearly married up, jumping from a crane operator to what looks like Old Money, and lots of it.)
It was a nice ironic touch, though, to have the hot-rodding Cruise character mock his wife's new husband's SUV as looking "safe," and then have him steal a similar vehicle for his escape.
Some viewers and reviewers felt that deaths were more realistic and meaningful in this film than in most. Maybe they get to know people faster than I do, but I didn't see it. You saw people disintegrate a touch more clearly than in similar films, but the early scenes of Tom Cruise running untouched while almost everyone around him is killed, and every building seems to immediately blow up or fall down just after he passes it, his invulnerability is emphasized. You know he's going to survive to the end.
One of the more frightening scenes in the Pal film is the riot in the streets of LA that stops the scientists from getting to safety, where they could work on a way to stop the Martians. There was a similar scene in this film, but the stakes were only personal. And that's really the difference, it seems to me: the monsters are just special effects, they could be any persistent, horrific danger that tests the Tom Cruise character. There are a few shots with that hallucinatory look of the celebrated D-Day landing in '>Saving Private Ryan, but the horror is so focused on Cruise and his forward momentum that the general slaughter seems less important.
After seeing this movie, I couldn't help thinking about its younger audience---kids the age I was when I saw the Pal film. Although I was a pre-teen when I saw that first version (being almost exactly Spielberg's age), I identified with the hero-scientist and carefully watched his relationship with the Girl, how they acted, how they treated each other, etc. When they were separated I felt the personal merging with the larger disaster, and with doom seemingly certain, it seemed right for people to try to be with someone they loved.
In this film, I wonder who young viewers are going to identify with. Will they really identify with the daughter, the son? Can they possibly identify with the father? I would love to know the answer to this. Maybe the emotions in this film are more authentic, and people can put themselves in the place of these ordinary people on the run.
Then again, maybe kids weaned on video games don't need to identify with any characters to enjoy the action; maybe that's Saturday Matinee era thinking.
It was suggested that this would be a more faithful adaptation of Wells' novel, and in some respects it is. But like many movie versions, it loses the meaning and the elegance of the concepts worked out in action and images. Wells basic point was that the Martians were what humans could very well evolve into---huge-brained beings totally dependent on their machines---if evolution proceded on strictly Darwinian lines, without intervention by human ethical or other higher order feelings and thinking. In behavior, the Martians were what Europeans were to Indigenous peoples in America, Africa and other places they invaded and colonized, in the name of progress. All of that is lost. This movie seldom strays from the level of sensation.
In recent interviews, Spielberg kept emphasizing that all he was trying to do was make an exciting movie for the 4th of July weekend. His first idea for The War of the Worlds was as a thrill ride at an amusement park. Maybe we should take him at his word. I'm not sure I'd even call this a science fiction movie. Maybe a kind of domestic disaster film. In any case, a great spectacle.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Before Steven: Versions of The War of the Worlds
by William S. Kowinski
An earlier essay described the text and subtexts of H.G. Wells' '>novel, The War of the Worlds. After a few additional tidbits on the novel, a brief rundown of previous versions on film and on radio follows.
First, the novel...
"The War of the Worlds," first published in 1898, transformed two popular topics that had been building interest throughout the decade: Mars and invasions.
Observations of Mars with new telescopes led to sensational speculations, including the fabled canals that American astronomer Percival Lowell was sure would prove the existence of Martian civilization. In 1894, the astronomer M. Javelle of Nice reported "strange lights" on the Martian surface which might be signals. This prompted eminent inventors, including Marconi and Edison, to try to devise a way to signal back. Mars seized the popular imagination--- more than 50 novels concerning Mars and Martians were published during the 1890s.
At the same time, the ominous build-up of armies and the leaden threat of new forms of mechanized warfare inspired another series of popular novels, depicting one European nation invading another, beginning with Germany invading England in "'>The Battle of Dorking." Few of the Mars novels or the invasion novels have lasted, but Wells saw the potential of putting the ideas together, and creating something greater than the sum of its parts.
text continues after illustrations
by William S. Kowinski
An earlier essay described the text and subtexts of H.G. Wells' '>novel, The War of the Worlds. After a few additional tidbits on the novel, a brief rundown of previous versions on film and on radio follows.
First, the novel...
"The War of the Worlds," first published in 1898, transformed two popular topics that had been building interest throughout the decade: Mars and invasions.
Observations of Mars with new telescopes led to sensational speculations, including the fabled canals that American astronomer Percival Lowell was sure would prove the existence of Martian civilization. In 1894, the astronomer M. Javelle of Nice reported "strange lights" on the Martian surface which might be signals. This prompted eminent inventors, including Marconi and Edison, to try to devise a way to signal back. Mars seized the popular imagination--- more than 50 novels concerning Mars and Martians were published during the 1890s.
At the same time, the ominous build-up of armies and the leaden threat of new forms of mechanized warfare inspired another series of popular novels, depicting one European nation invading another, beginning with Germany invading England in "'>The Battle of Dorking." Few of the Mars novels or the invasion novels have lasted, but Wells saw the potential of putting the ideas together, and creating something greater than the sum of its parts.
text continues after illustrations
Martians Invade American Homes! The Radio Version 1938
The novel (serialized in magazines, printed in inexpensive books) was the most popular storytelling medium of the 1890s, as it had been for more than a century. Everyone from those in the upper classes, the educated middle class, to shop clerks in the increasingly literate lower middle class, read novels. Novelists like Charles Dickens were the 19th century equivalent of rock stars.
But by the 1930s, especially in America, radio was fast supplanting print as the most popular storytelling medium.
Radio stories were somewhat like stories in print, because the listener, like the reader, had to imagine the faces and the sights of the action. However, they heard the voices, and some of the sounds.
Radio stories had another special quality: millions of people heard them, all at the same time.
Radio was also becoming an important medium of news, especially breaking news. Elaborate conventions helped identify entertainment, often taken from the theatre (if not a live audience, then the sound of crowds applauding, for instance), and also borrowed from the movies (music in the background of the dialogue and action). Certain sounds and tones of voice identified the news.
The dramatic possibilities inherent in adopting the conventions of news reporting to tell a fictional story may have occurred to others before Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air, but nobody had done it quite so effectively as they did on '>Halloween night of 1938.
People tuned into their favorite program, which might be Mercury Theatre on the Air, or they turned the dial until they found something they liked (music, for instance, which was interspersed with the fake news in the first part of the Welles broadcast.)
Those who caught the first minute of the Mercury broadcast were told they were going to be listening to a dramatization. Those who listened carefully to Orson Welles intoning the introduction, replete with phrases from HG's novel, may also have noted that he referred to the story beginning on October 30, 1939 (not what it was, 1938), and also described this fictional reality: " Business was better. The war scare was over..."
Business wasn't particularly better in 1938; though FDR's New Deal had engendered hope and was establishing a social safety net, it was still the ninth year of the Great Depression. And "the war scare" was not over. Hitler had appointed himself War Minister, and marched German armies into Austria. Japan invaded and occupied areas of China. The appeasement policy of Chamberlain in England led to a government crisis. By the end of the year, the U.S. and Germany had cut off diplomatic relations.
And a year and a half earlier, the Germans in support of Franco in Spain bombed and devastated the Spanish city of Guernica, the first such bombing of civilian populations in Europe, quickly made famous worldwide by Pablo Picasso's mural painting, exhibited at the Paris World Exhibition.
The war scare was definitely not over.
The novel (serialized in magazines, printed in inexpensive books) was the most popular storytelling medium of the 1890s, as it had been for more than a century. Everyone from those in the upper classes, the educated middle class, to shop clerks in the increasingly literate lower middle class, read novels. Novelists like Charles Dickens were the 19th century equivalent of rock stars.
But by the 1930s, especially in America, radio was fast supplanting print as the most popular storytelling medium.
Radio stories were somewhat like stories in print, because the listener, like the reader, had to imagine the faces and the sights of the action. However, they heard the voices, and some of the sounds.
Radio stories had another special quality: millions of people heard them, all at the same time.
Radio was also becoming an important medium of news, especially breaking news. Elaborate conventions helped identify entertainment, often taken from the theatre (if not a live audience, then the sound of crowds applauding, for instance), and also borrowed from the movies (music in the background of the dialogue and action). Certain sounds and tones of voice identified the news.
The dramatic possibilities inherent in adopting the conventions of news reporting to tell a fictional story may have occurred to others before Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air, but nobody had done it quite so effectively as they did on '>Halloween night of 1938.
People tuned into their favorite program, which might be Mercury Theatre on the Air, or they turned the dial until they found something they liked (music, for instance, which was interspersed with the fake news in the first part of the Welles broadcast.)
Those who caught the first minute of the Mercury broadcast were told they were going to be listening to a dramatization. Those who listened carefully to Orson Welles intoning the introduction, replete with phrases from HG's novel, may also have noted that he referred to the story beginning on October 30, 1939 (not what it was, 1938), and also described this fictional reality: " Business was better. The war scare was over..."
Business wasn't particularly better in 1938; though FDR's New Deal had engendered hope and was establishing a social safety net, it was still the ninth year of the Great Depression. And "the war scare" was not over. Hitler had appointed himself War Minister, and marched German armies into Austria. Japan invaded and occupied areas of China. The appeasement policy of Chamberlain in England led to a government crisis. By the end of the year, the U.S. and Germany had cut off diplomatic relations.
And a year and a half earlier, the Germans in support of Franco in Spain bombed and devastated the Spanish city of Guernica, the first such bombing of civilian populations in Europe, quickly made famous worldwide by Pablo Picasso's mural painting, exhibited at the Paris World Exhibition.
The war scare was definitely not over.
However, Orson's introduction may have been more accurate when he said that "thirty-two million people were listening in on '>radios."
The '>radio play, written by Mercury member Howard Koch (who later went on to a screenwriting career that included Casablanca) moved the scene of the invasion to New Jersey. The first Martian capsule landed on a farm at Grover's Mills, a conveniently remote location, also conveniently located near Princeton (not yet home of Albert Einstein, but of other scientists including the fictional Professor Pierson, who also sounded a lot like Orson Welles.)
Koch later wrote a book about the whole affair ('>The Panic Broadcast), which includes the script (and some inaccuracies in the introduction---the play was announced on the air as a presentation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, not Howard Koch's play.) He claims early on that HG's story supplied him with the basic invasion plot, and what the fighting machines looked like, and little else. That's not exactly accurate either. Koch borrowed a lot more, including characters, situations and entire chunks of dialogue.
But, following Orson's instructions, Koch wrote it as a series of news bulletins. And since network news reporters don't interview many ordinary people (except to make fun of them, as a reporter does of a farmer early in this play), the story is told through various authority figures: first the scientist, then police and military authorities. HG's "everyman" (who was more of a unassuming, suburban, well-educated essayist with a scientific bent) disappeared from the story.
Koch's book reproduces some news stories and columns commenting on the "panic" the broadcast caused when listeners believed, or acted as if they believed, that an invasion was underway---by Martians, Germans or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Some columnists deplored the Orson Welles tactics of presentation, others thought it was good practice for a real war emergency.
But later historians dispute the actual numbers of panicked people involved, their estimates varying from hundreds to tens of thousands. That some people believed they were listening to news broadcasts of an actual ongoing invasion is indisputable. '>Steve Allen, the late comedian and writer, vividly remembered being a child in the care of a relative who really did panic, and tried to take him to safety.
It did become a case study in the insidious persuasiveness of mass electronic media. Even after it was exposed as a "hoax," tourists visited the supposed site of the Martian invasion in Grover's Mill. (Of course, fans of '>The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai know that the invasion was real after all, but not by Martians---by Lectoids from the Eighth Dimension.)
I can personally testify to the effectiveness of Welles’ fake newscast technique. I was in junior high when I first heard of the Orson Welles panic broadcast, and I immediately wrote a script describing a Martian invasion, also told in news bulletins, but using the names of prominent television anchors and reporters of the time, like Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. I got some friends to act it out for my father’s clunky reel-to-reel tape recorder, complete with homemade sound effects. I later played it for my junior high class, and after a smattering of laughter as they recognized voices---of course we sounded nothing like the reporters we were saying we were---they listened in something like stunned silence. I was amazed at the effect---despite everything, they were on the edge of their seats.
One person who had no doubt as to the effect of the Mercury broadcast is said to be FDR. Five years later, when some people refused to believe the reports of Pearl Harbor, he called Orson and blamed their skepticism on him and his phony invasion.
Another person who was initially upset was H.G. Wells himself. He was angry about his story apparently being misused as a Halloween prank simply to scare people in times that were scary enough.
But his anger at Orson Welles, like a lot of his enmities, didn't last long. On his last trip to America in 1940, HG Wells and Orson Welles met for the first time, and were interviewed together---on the radio. HG gave Orson the opportunity to plug the movie he was working on, called '>Citizen Kane. After that movie came out, Wells cabled Welles to express his admiration of that film.
The '>radio play, written by Mercury member Howard Koch (who later went on to a screenwriting career that included Casablanca) moved the scene of the invasion to New Jersey. The first Martian capsule landed on a farm at Grover's Mills, a conveniently remote location, also conveniently located near Princeton (not yet home of Albert Einstein, but of other scientists including the fictional Professor Pierson, who also sounded a lot like Orson Welles.)
Koch later wrote a book about the whole affair ('>The Panic Broadcast), which includes the script (and some inaccuracies in the introduction---the play was announced on the air as a presentation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, not Howard Koch's play.) He claims early on that HG's story supplied him with the basic invasion plot, and what the fighting machines looked like, and little else. That's not exactly accurate either. Koch borrowed a lot more, including characters, situations and entire chunks of dialogue.
But, following Orson's instructions, Koch wrote it as a series of news bulletins. And since network news reporters don't interview many ordinary people (except to make fun of them, as a reporter does of a farmer early in this play), the story is told through various authority figures: first the scientist, then police and military authorities. HG's "everyman" (who was more of a unassuming, suburban, well-educated essayist with a scientific bent) disappeared from the story.
Koch's book reproduces some news stories and columns commenting on the "panic" the broadcast caused when listeners believed, or acted as if they believed, that an invasion was underway---by Martians, Germans or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Some columnists deplored the Orson Welles tactics of presentation, others thought it was good practice for a real war emergency.
But later historians dispute the actual numbers of panicked people involved, their estimates varying from hundreds to tens of thousands. That some people believed they were listening to news broadcasts of an actual ongoing invasion is indisputable. '>Steve Allen, the late comedian and writer, vividly remembered being a child in the care of a relative who really did panic, and tried to take him to safety.
It did become a case study in the insidious persuasiveness of mass electronic media. Even after it was exposed as a "hoax," tourists visited the supposed site of the Martian invasion in Grover's Mill. (Of course, fans of '>The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai know that the invasion was real after all, but not by Martians---by Lectoids from the Eighth Dimension.)
I can personally testify to the effectiveness of Welles’ fake newscast technique. I was in junior high when I first heard of the Orson Welles panic broadcast, and I immediately wrote a script describing a Martian invasion, also told in news bulletins, but using the names of prominent television anchors and reporters of the time, like Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. I got some friends to act it out for my father’s clunky reel-to-reel tape recorder, complete with homemade sound effects. I later played it for my junior high class, and after a smattering of laughter as they recognized voices---of course we sounded nothing like the reporters we were saying we were---they listened in something like stunned silence. I was amazed at the effect---despite everything, they were on the edge of their seats.
One person who had no doubt as to the effect of the Mercury broadcast is said to be FDR. Five years later, when some people refused to believe the reports of Pearl Harbor, he called Orson and blamed their skepticism on him and his phony invasion.
Another person who was initially upset was H.G. Wells himself. He was angry about his story apparently being misused as a Halloween prank simply to scare people in times that were scary enough.
But his anger at Orson Welles, like a lot of his enmities, didn't last long. On his last trip to America in 1940, HG Wells and Orson Welles met for the first time, and were interviewed together---on the radio. HG gave Orson the opportunity to plug the movie he was working on, called '>Citizen Kane. After that movie came out, Wells cabled Welles to express his admiration of that film.
The Strange Story of "Star Begotten"
In a sense, this is also a version of The War of the Worlds, though relatively few people know about it, and it came about in an odd way.
By 1938, HG had finished his only two film projects, one of which was the futuristic "'>Things to Come." By then he must have realized that his early "scientific romances"---now called science fiction--- were enjoying a second wave of popularity, and might well be his most lasting works. He'd written a preface for a '>collection of seven of them, explaining his method, which was first published by Knopf in 1934.
Around this time he also met Olaf Stapledon, his most ardent admirer and the author of the stunning science fiction epic, '>Last and First Men. So it happened that for the first time in decades, HG wrote another science fiction novel, and it would be his last.
'>Star Begotten, published in 1937, is described by critic Frank McConnell as "The War of the Worlds rewritten from the vantage point of forty years later and with a startingly different conclusion."
It tells the story of a popular historian, author of books extolling the deeds of heroes, who suddenly realizes that earth is being invaded by aliens---not in spaceships or fighting machines, but by means of cosmic rays that subtly alter the characteristics of babies in the womb, so they are born different. He believes that his wife is one of those affected, as is his son.
The novel details his growing conviction---and that of others he confides in---that this invasion is taking place, and that it is the perfect way to invade a planet. Aliens don't have to conquer the planet, but simply become the inhabitants. Wells builds up the creepiness that subsequent generations would get from films like '>Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
But then the historian confronts his wife, who misunderstands him and believes he is claiming that he is one of the invaded people, the "star-begotten." And suddenly he realizes that he is. He realizes as well that it is a beneficent invasion, and the only way that humanity will go forward to its proper destiny. It is in a sense a natural mutation to a better being. So "Body Snatchers" suddenly becomes more like "'>Childhood's End" with more than a flavor of Olaf Stapledon. The new species they are becoming, as McConnell writes, "is not really a new species at all, but the human race, in process of becoming, exactly, human."
This book was Wells' last science fiction novel, and probably his least known. Yet it may have been his last word in and on the genre, in more ways than one.
In a sense, this is also a version of The War of the Worlds, though relatively few people know about it, and it came about in an odd way.
By 1938, HG had finished his only two film projects, one of which was the futuristic "'>Things to Come." By then he must have realized that his early "scientific romances"---now called science fiction--- were enjoying a second wave of popularity, and might well be his most lasting works. He'd written a preface for a '>collection of seven of them, explaining his method, which was first published by Knopf in 1934.
Around this time he also met Olaf Stapledon, his most ardent admirer and the author of the stunning science fiction epic, '>Last and First Men. So it happened that for the first time in decades, HG wrote another science fiction novel, and it would be his last.
'>Star Begotten, published in 1937, is described by critic Frank McConnell as "The War of the Worlds rewritten from the vantage point of forty years later and with a startingly different conclusion."
It tells the story of a popular historian, author of books extolling the deeds of heroes, who suddenly realizes that earth is being invaded by aliens---not in spaceships or fighting machines, but by means of cosmic rays that subtly alter the characteristics of babies in the womb, so they are born different. He believes that his wife is one of those affected, as is his son.
The novel details his growing conviction---and that of others he confides in---that this invasion is taking place, and that it is the perfect way to invade a planet. Aliens don't have to conquer the planet, but simply become the inhabitants. Wells builds up the creepiness that subsequent generations would get from films like '>Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
But then the historian confronts his wife, who misunderstands him and believes he is claiming that he is one of the invaded people, the "star-begotten." And suddenly he realizes that he is. He realizes as well that it is a beneficent invasion, and the only way that humanity will go forward to its proper destiny. It is in a sense a natural mutation to a better being. So "Body Snatchers" suddenly becomes more like "'>Childhood's End" with more than a flavor of Olaf Stapledon. The new species they are becoming, as McConnell writes, "is not really a new species at all, but the human race, in process of becoming, exactly, human."
This book was Wells' last science fiction novel, and probably his least known. Yet it may have been his last word in and on the genre, in more ways than one.
The 1953 Movie of The War of the Worlds
Until this year, there was only one film adaptation of "The War of the Worlds," in 1953. A version from England made recently, and released direct to DVD, retains the period and location of Wells' story. But I haven't yet seen it. This '>"H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds" is available on DVD, as are a couple of documentaries, '>this one and '>this one, on Wells, the novel and other versions, and I haven't seen them either.
'>The 1953 movie, produced by George Pal and directed by Byron Haskin, took a few additional aspects of the Wells' novel, but basically it updated and remade the Howard Koch/ Orson Welles radio version. It had HG's details of military tactics, but like the radio version it concentrated on scientists and authority figures. It even had a radio reporter narrating the first appearance of the Martians' machines, and at the last attempt to stop them by means of the atomic bomb.
Though the story follows a young scientist and his budding romance with a preacher's daughter as the Martians in their flying machines wreak havoc on the California countryside, the mood of this version is heavily influenced by the atomic age and the Cold War.
The Bomb is present in odd details: the scientist comfortably fitting in at a country square dance, much as the Manhattan Project scientists did at Los Alamos; the invasion heralded by a sudden, distant flash of light, as accompanied the Bomb test in New Mexico just eight years earlier. In fact, one of the cover stories the military used to keep the test secret was that a meteorite had crashed into the New Mexico desert, which is how the Martians arrive in all the War of the Worlds versions until Spielberg’s.
But mostly it is the Bomb's nature as the ultimate weapon, capable of wiping out human civilization---destroying everything and everyone, wherever and whoever they are. Ordinary people are as helpless against the impersonal Bomb as they would be against alien invaders.
Of course, the Russians were rapidly being cast in the part of alien invaders. The Godlessness of Communism was often emphasized, and that's a theme here: the man of the cloth, greeting the invader with a crucifix held high, is mercilessly vaporized. As the machines destroy the cities, those who haven't fled gather in churches, where they are still helpless, although the defeat of the Martians is linked with answered prayers, and the microbes that "God in his wisdom" created.
As someone of almost exactly Steven Spielberg's age, I can testify that on an emotional level, this movie accurately reflects the early Cold War mixture of fear, bewilderment and something like helpless resignation.
The movie's effect was heightened by the almost hallucinatory brilliance of the Technicolor. From a kid's perspective, the Martian machines were convincing and neat-looking, even if they did resemble reassembled parts of new cars, and the sound they made was especially chilling. That's a first impression that's lasted.
The film starts slowly by today's standards, with a strange sort of lecture about the relative merits of the planets in the solar system as places hospitable for life. All the planets are mentioned except Venus, and no reason is given for the omission, but it might have something to do with Wells' novel, in which he speculates that having been repulsed from earth, the Martians happily settled on their second choice, Venus. Apparently HG wasn't interested in sequels.
By locating this version in 1950s California, and showing rather than telling or describing, this movie was very effective at portraying with modern weapons the possibility of a civilization-ending war. Though American soldiers had seen European and Japanese cities reduced to rubble, Americans at home had not yet seen this simulated in their own country. Though it wasn’t elaborate,it had the same sobering and frightening effect as Wells' novel did in its time.
The climax of the film wasn't actually the Martian's defeat but the use of the atomic bomb against them---and its uselessness in stopping them. This was the ultimate admission of human frailty in this age. Everyone was afraid of the Bomb, but the Bomb might not be enough to head off destruction.
Some science fiction buffs don't much like this movie. They complain about seeing the wires holding up the Martian's machines. I'm afraid I still see it with the same eyes as I first did. This isn't true of all scifi movies I first saw as a child---even Pal's '>When Worlds Collide, which I loved, no longer convinces. (That awful painting at the end that had amazed me as the landscape of a new world!) But I'm still a sucker for this film. The scary parts are scary. The Girl is a bit hysterical for my tastes but I still want to protect her, and I still identify with the scientist played by Gene Barry.
The sudden appearance of the Martian still startles me, and I recall another moment that scared me in a cautionary way---it was the rioting crowd in the city, that overturns the scientists' truck and injures several of them, preventing them from finding the solution that would defeat the Martians. That was a cautionary moment for me: it said that ignorance and fear (specifically in the person of loudmouthed idiots) could defeat us as effectively than any unearthly enemy.
INDEPENDENCE DAY 1996
Lots of people steal liberally from one version or another of The War of the Worlds. George Lucas derived his Imperial Walkers from the Martian machines in the novel, and Steven Spielberg virtually stole the scene of the separated lovers fighting through the crowd to find each other in the church in the George Pal version for a similar scene in which Richard Dreyfus finds Melinda Dillon in '>Close Encounters.
But nobody has adapted or adopted or stolen as much as the makers of Independence Day (which, by the way, they freely admit---as they do about the other dozen scifi films they "paid homage" to). So when I heard that Steven Spielberg was planning a remake of The War of the Worlds I could only laugh---isn't that exactly what '>Independence Day did?
According to the DVD commentary, the filmmakers (Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin) were attempting to graft the 1970s disaster film conventions (many characters, all drawn inexorably to the same scene of disaster) onto the 1950s alien invasion movie. In the process they gleefully appropriate ideas and images from science fiction films of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. They point out some references themselves on the commentary track: an opening shot reminiscent of Star Wars, a SETI scene out of "Contact," and a television playing "The Day The Earth Stood Still"-all in just the few couple of minutes. There are obvious visual and verbal references to "Close Encounters," "Star Wars," E.T.," "Planet of the Apes," and "Star Trek." Other more subtle motifs suggest "Superman" and the old Flash Gordon serials.
All of this supports the unique mood of this movie: somehow it gets away with not taking itself entirely seriously, and yet getting viewers involved in characters and the basic story. Even the casting adds to this with references, by featuring actors we identify with other science fiction movies and TV, where they'd played characters who displayed some humor: Will Smith would do a couple of "Men in Black" flicks, Bill Pullman had already done "'>Spaceballs;" Jeff Goldblum had played a similar off-kilter scientist in "Jurassic Park," a scary off-kilter scientist in "The Fly," and played a cowboy surgeon in the comedy science fiction adventure," Buckaroo Banzai." And of course the casting coup was Brent Spiner, Star Trek's '>Data, as a wide-eyed, wild-haired, too-much LDS--in-the-60s scientist.
Lots of people steal liberally from one version or another of The War of the Worlds. George Lucas derived his Imperial Walkers from the Martian machines in the novel, and Steven Spielberg virtually stole the scene of the separated lovers fighting through the crowd to find each other in the church in the George Pal version for a similar scene in which Richard Dreyfus finds Melinda Dillon in '>Close Encounters.
But nobody has adapted or adopted or stolen as much as the makers of Independence Day (which, by the way, they freely admit---as they do about the other dozen scifi films they "paid homage" to). So when I heard that Steven Spielberg was planning a remake of The War of the Worlds I could only laugh---isn't that exactly what '>Independence Day did?
According to the DVD commentary, the filmmakers (Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin) were attempting to graft the 1970s disaster film conventions (many characters, all drawn inexorably to the same scene of disaster) onto the 1950s alien invasion movie. In the process they gleefully appropriate ideas and images from science fiction films of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. They point out some references themselves on the commentary track: an opening shot reminiscent of Star Wars, a SETI scene out of "Contact," and a television playing "The Day The Earth Stood Still"-all in just the few couple of minutes. There are obvious visual and verbal references to "Close Encounters," "Star Wars," E.T.," "Planet of the Apes," and "Star Trek." Other more subtle motifs suggest "Superman" and the old Flash Gordon serials.
All of this supports the unique mood of this movie: somehow it gets away with not taking itself entirely seriously, and yet getting viewers involved in characters and the basic story. Even the casting adds to this with references, by featuring actors we identify with other science fiction movies and TV, where they'd played characters who displayed some humor: Will Smith would do a couple of "Men in Black" flicks, Bill Pullman had already done "'>Spaceballs;" Jeff Goldblum had played a similar off-kilter scientist in "Jurassic Park," a scary off-kilter scientist in "The Fly," and played a cowboy surgeon in the comedy science fiction adventure," Buckaroo Banzai." And of course the casting coup was Brent Spiner, Star Trek's '>Data, as a wide-eyed, wild-haired, too-much LDS--in-the-60s scientist.
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