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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House

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Speaker 3: Cinema we're doing something a little bit different. Most of

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Speaker 3: the time we focus on narrative feature films, at least

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Speaker 3: within the weird genres. But today we are not looking

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Speaker 3: at a narrative feature film. We're going to be talking

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Speaker 3: about an anthology format art film from nineteen ninety two

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Speaker 3: called Beyond the Mind's Eye, which was the second part

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Speaker 3: in a series of similar films beginning in the year

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Speaker 3: nineteen ninety with The Mind's Eye, a computer animation odyssey. Now,

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Speaker 3: as the name implies, the Mind's Eye films were showcases

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Speaker 3: computer animation, showcases for sort of the cutting edge of

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Speaker 3: computer based animation techniques of the day, and the typical

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Speaker 3: format of all these films in the Mind's Eye series

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Speaker 3: would be a sequence of musical numbers usually I think,

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Speaker 3: just by a single artist throughout, accompanied by strange computer

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Speaker 3: generated imagery scenes and imagery. Now, Rob, I don't know

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Speaker 3: if you were able to get more clarity on the

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Speaker 3: source of all of these animated segments. One thing that's

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Speaker 3: clear is that a lot of the segments were created

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Speaker 3: for other projects originally, things like TV commercials, sci fi movies,

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Speaker 3: video games, demo reels, just industry stuff and so forth,

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Speaker 3: and then a lot of that was edited together and

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Speaker 3: set to music for these projects. But I don't know

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Speaker 3: if that's the case with all of the animation or

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Speaker 3: just some of it. It's possible some segments were created

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Speaker 3: specifically for the mind S Eye movies, but I couldn't

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Speaker 3: get a clear answer on that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those situations where the movie

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Speaker 2: database listings for this title, beyond the mind side that

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Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about here today, seem kind

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Speaker 2: of limited. Now, I will add that the actual credits

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Speaker 2: for the feature itself. I mean, those credits do provide

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Speaker 2: a lot of names and a lot more of additional info.

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Speaker 2: But I feel like to really cite everything and to

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Speaker 2: source and to point to the source of everything that

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Speaker 2: we see in the picture, you're dealing with like a

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Speaker 2: true sort of multi media archaeology, sort of an exercise

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Speaker 2: that we're we were not really all about here with

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Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. So we're going to call out some

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Speaker 2: of the people that were involved, but we can't possibly

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Speaker 2: list everyone because again this is an anthology all these

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Speaker 2: different films, films that, especially for the time period, often

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Speaker 2: involved like multiple folks bringing it together from a technological

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Speaker 2: in ar two stick standpoint.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So I wonder I bet a lot

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Speaker 3: of you out there listening remember The Mind's Eye if

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Speaker 3: you were around and watching TV, reading, reading Wired magazine

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Speaker 3: in the early nineties or something. The Mind's Eye films

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Speaker 3: were apparently extremely popular on home video. I never rented

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Speaker 3: one when I was a kid, but I've had friends

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Speaker 3: mentioned them before, like, oh, remember the Mind's Eye, Like

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Speaker 3: you know, I'm I'm maybe somebody said they rented it

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Speaker 3: from Blockbuster or something. But anyway, they were very popular

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Speaker 3: on home video, initially on VHS and on laser disc

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Speaker 3: and then later on DVD, and I can only imagine

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Speaker 3: the number of hangouts cool hangouts in the early nineties

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Speaker 3: that began, like dude, you've got to come over and

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Speaker 3: watch this tape I rented. It's so trippy. And so

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Speaker 3: that's the series. But again, the specific film that we're

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Speaker 3: going to be talking about today is the second movie

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Speaker 3: in the Mind's I series, called Beyond The Mind's I

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Speaker 3: from nineteen ninety two, directed by Michael Boydston and featuring

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Speaker 3: music by Yan Hamer, who I know on the podcast before,

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Speaker 3: I've probably called Jan Hammer, but it's Jon Hamer. I

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Speaker 3: found out by listening to an interview. So when I

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Speaker 3: got the idea to do one of these one of

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Speaker 3: the Mind's Eye movies for the show, I was browsing

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Speaker 3: through a list of them and I saw one was

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Speaker 3: by one Head, music by Yon Hamer, and I knew

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Speaker 3: we had to pick the hammer fest. It had to

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Speaker 3: be that one.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Listeners to Weird House Cinema will remember that

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Speaker 2: Jon Hammer scored the film I Come In Peace aka

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Speaker 2: Dark Angel that we previously talked about on the show,

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Speaker 2: and most famously, of course, did the soundtrack for Miami Vice,

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Speaker 2: including that absurdly great track Crockets theme. But anyway, we'll

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Speaker 2: come back to jon 'hammer in a bit and we'll

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Speaker 2: talk about him a lot, because basically this is a

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Speaker 2: film where his music is his front and center. Really,

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Speaker 2: I mean, it's the visuals and then the music of

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Speaker 2: Yon Hamer, and that what beyond the Mind's Eye consists.

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Speaker 3: Of, Yeah, now, whatever is going through your head right now?

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Speaker 3: Out there listening in the year twenty twenty four. Whatever

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Speaker 3: you are thinking about the idea of a combination art

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Speaker 3: house showcase and industrial demo reel entirely made out of

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Speaker 3: CGI from the early nineties, you do need to probably

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Speaker 3: shift your thinking a little bit, like, especially if you

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Speaker 3: weren't around at the time and don't like you can't

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Speaker 3: tap into that mindset again, because people in the nineties

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Speaker 3: were absolutely losing their minds about how astounding, futuristic and

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Speaker 3: even beautiful all this stuff was, which is kind of

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Speaker 3: hard to reconcile with the way it looks now, not

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Speaker 3: that it looks not that I'm insulting the way it

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Speaker 3: looks now, but it's just it was a different time,

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Speaker 3: and it's hard to get fully back into that brain space.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's it's very much a snapshot of

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Speaker 2: the time. I mean, this is a nineteen ninety two release.

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Speaker 2: This is hutting edge computer generated imagery from the early nineties,

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Speaker 2: the very early nineties. And you know, I honestly can't

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Speaker 2: remember if I ever rented this from a video store.

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Speaker 2: It's very possible that I did, but I mostly just

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Speaker 2: remember seeing the commercials for it, because there were a

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Speaker 2: lot of TV commercials for it. As I remember, I'm

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Speaker 2: guessing I was watching, you know, it's probably MTV, maybe

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Speaker 2: the Sci Fi Channel as well, though honestly, I can't

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Speaker 2: remember offhand when that started out. I think it may

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Speaker 2: have started in ninety two, so maybe not Sci Fi Channel,

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Speaker 2: But I feel like MTV at least was prime, prime

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Speaker 2: target area for these commercials. And it really did feel exciting.

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Speaker 2: It felt like a revelation. This is the future. This

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Speaker 2: is what computer generated imagery can do for us, this

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Speaker 2: is what video games can do for us, because our

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Speaker 2: video games were not like this, not yet, but it

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Speaker 2: was the promise that they could be. And in general,

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Speaker 2: it's like, this is the future, and and you had

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Speaker 2: every reason to be excited. And honestly, I was looking

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Speaker 2: back on I was thinking about the fact that, well,

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Speaker 2: of course I was a child at the time. I

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Speaker 2: was a kid, so of course I was excited. You know.

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Speaker 2: Did adults feel the same way, Well, obviously they did,

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Speaker 2: because on one hand, these videos were highly successful. They were,

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Speaker 2: you know, on the best sellers lists and all. And

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Speaker 2: I looked around and I found that Roger Ebert was

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Speaker 2: a big fan. On the Cisco and Ebert Show, there's

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Speaker 2: a particular episode I was able to. You can look

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Speaker 2: it up on the archives and find the full episode.

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Speaker 2: It's the one where they they review Lorenzo's Oil and

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Speaker 2: Chaplain and some other you know, kind of stuffy and

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Speaker 2: certainly non non futuristic movie. But at the end of it,

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Speaker 2: we have Roger Ebert's video pick of the Week and

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Speaker 2: it is Beyond the Mind's Eye, and he loves it.

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Speaker 2: He says, quote, one day computers will be able to

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Speaker 2: create entire movies, and the visual possibilities are breadth. To

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Speaker 2: look at where this shot takes us, and they cut

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Speaker 2: to one of the you know, the otherworldly vistas that

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Speaker 2: Beyond the Mind's Eye gives us, and he closes up

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Speaker 2: as saying, it's quite a trip.

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Speaker 3: One day computers will animate entire movies.

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Speaker 2: And they would like Yeah. In nineteen ninety five, that's

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Speaker 2: when we got Toy Story from Pixar, the first fully

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Speaker 2: CGI full length motion pictures, So yeah, it was just

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Speaker 2: about to happen basically, like they were already in production

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Speaker 2: on Toys. I think the descript for Toy Story was

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Speaker 2: kind of like finalized in ninety three, so like really

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Speaker 2: it was about to happen. So I feel like Ebert

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Speaker 2: was correct on all part, on all accounts here, this

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Speaker 2: is essentially what we're going to see, and we have

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Speaker 2: seen the perfection to some extent. I think of CGI

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Speaker 2: animated films and the Pixar Disney DreamWorks mold, though of

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Speaker 2: course it's worth pointing out that things like photorealistic CGI

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Speaker 2: has a lot more to contend with. You know, there's

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Speaker 2: a more uncanny valley to traverse in that realm, and

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Speaker 2: so I don't know if we've seen anything that truly

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Speaker 2: succeeds in that category.

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Speaker 3: Now, if you go back and read what people were

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Speaker 3: saying about these movies at the time, one very common

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Speaker 3: theme is that the Mindseye films are regarded as trippy

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Speaker 3: or psychedelic. Now, that might not seem all that strange

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Speaker 3: for a computer animated music video film, but that's not

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Speaker 3: necessarily said about all animated films, or even all art films. So, like,

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Speaker 3: what is it about this CGI package film idea that

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Speaker 3: specifically lends itself to descriptions having to do with with

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Speaker 3: visionary experiences or psychedelic drugs. I was thinking about this,

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Speaker 3: and this is a theme I'll come back to multiple

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Speaker 3: times in the episode I've been thinking a lot about

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Speaker 3: linking techniques in the like just practical techniques of computer animation,

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Speaker 3: to the effect that the film has on us, and

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Speaker 3: I was wondering if the trippiness has something to do

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Speaker 3: with the with the particular capabilities of computer animation at

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Speaker 3: the time that by algorithmically changing dimension values across time

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Speaker 3: for like a shape or an image on the screen,

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Speaker 3: you can create these shifting morphing forms which are all

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Speaker 3: throughout the animated segments in beyond the mind's eye. I

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Speaker 3: would say every single one of them has an image,

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Speaker 3: like a shape or an object that morphs into something else,

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Speaker 3: and these changes from one thing to another very much

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Speaker 3: mirror the form shifting visual effects that people commonly experience

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Speaker 3: on some psychedelic compounds. So I wonder if that's one

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Speaker 3: part of it, that particular capability of computer animation and

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Speaker 3: its similarity to psychedelic visual effects. Of course, having one

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Speaker 3: shape morph into another is something you can do in

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Speaker 3: traditional hand drawn animation as well, but you see it

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Speaker 3: a lot in early CGI, and I wonder if it's

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Speaker 3: because it was like easier to automate by some kind

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Speaker 3: of stepwise manipulation or algorithm of just the number variables

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Speaker 3: that you use to create the dimensions of an image.

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Speaker 3: Another characteristic that I wonder if people were picking up

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Speaker 3: on in describing this movie as psychedelic or trippy, is

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Speaker 3: just that the imagery looks super, super weird in a

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Speaker 3: way that nobody would have been familiar with before CGI.

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Speaker 3: And again this would have to do with the practical

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Speaker 3: state of the industry, Like it was impossible to code

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Speaker 3: a realistic looking human face with computer animation at this time,

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Speaker 3: so realism is off the table. But you also could

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Speaker 3: not easily reproduce familiar hand drawn art styles that had

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Speaker 3: been around for years in traditional animation, So you would,

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Speaker 3: by necessity, be establishing a whole new visual language for

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Speaker 3: representing forms from the real world, especially like animals and

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Speaker 3: plants humans, And so by necessity they look the way

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Speaker 3: they're rendered is very unfamiliar to us. It doesn't look

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Speaker 3: either like reality or like any art we're familiar with.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, one thing that becomes obvious as you watch Beyond

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Speaker 2: the Mind's Eye is that a convincing reproduction of the

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Speaker 2: human body was not really achievable at this point, but

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Speaker 2: we still tried, because that's that's that's human art. We

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Speaker 2: always try to capture our own form in the forms

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Speaker 2: of animals in our vicinity, and yeah, they don't quite

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Speaker 2: hit the mark. But in not hitting the mark completely,

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Speaker 2: there is this it's close enough, you know, it doesn't

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Speaker 2: you know, we're we're vain pattern seeking creatures. So if

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Speaker 2: you get close enough to a human form, we'll identify

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Speaker 2: with it and we'll work with it. Right, So it's still,

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Speaker 2: you know, engrossing, even if some of the characters are

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Speaker 2: still a bit on the grotesque side.

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Speaker 3: Of things, which is the segment that has a human

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Speaker 3: figure but it just has leopard print flesh.

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Speaker 2: We we'll have to maybybe that'll come to me as

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Speaker 2: we get into the blow by blow plot of this movie.

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Speaker 2: But but yeah, you have things like like that that occur,

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Speaker 2: and yeah, you can still you can still connect with them,

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Speaker 2: you know. I was reminded in all of this, like

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Speaker 2: trying to think about like how it felt to see

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Speaker 2: these things, how it felt to see these kind of representations,

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Speaker 2: even if they, you know, were very by today's standards,

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Speaker 2: like crude representations of of like a human body or

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Speaker 2: an animal and whatnot. I'm reminded a little bit of

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Speaker 2: some of the these the AI generated images that we've

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Speaker 2: seen more of them. I'm thinking more of the things

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Speaker 2: that were really hitting maybe a year or two ago,

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Speaker 2: you know, during the era where it's like that you

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Speaker 2: could definitely look at the fingers and count the fingers

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Speaker 2: to see if something was was computer generated or not

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Speaker 2: AI generated or not. And I think one of the

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Speaker 2: things about those images is that, like the images we're

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Speaker 2: seeing and beyond the mind's eyes when they first hit,

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Speaker 2: they are not achieving like photorealism, they're not completely convincing.

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Speaker 2: You see them and you know something is off, but

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Speaker 2: also in it being off, it's something that you haven't

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Speaker 2: quite seen before, you're like, because I remember the first

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Speaker 2: time I saw some of those AI generated images, I

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Speaker 2: was like, who is this artist? Like it's clearly the

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Speaker 2: same person because they all kind of look the same,

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Speaker 2: but it's a little different than anything I've seen before,

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Speaker 2: and that makes it enthralling. Then then you get bored

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Speaker 2: with it and you move on. But the technology moves

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Speaker 2: on as well. The technology advances and it's no longer

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Speaker 2: capable or it's no longer creating things like it was before,

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Speaker 2: but the mood is still.

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Speaker 3: There, you know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, Now in terms of your point about like

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Speaker 2: psychedelia and the imagery that we see and beyond the

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Speaker 2: mind's eye. It is interesting to think about how there's

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Speaker 2: probably a number of nexus points between like various counterculture

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Speaker 2: movements and folks as well as some of the individuals

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Speaker 2: who are like pushing these developments. You know, I'm thinking

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Speaker 2: of you know, sort of Silicon Valley types, that convergence

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Speaker 2: of programming and art, like those worlds are probably you know,

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Speaker 2: inevitably bumping up against each other.

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Speaker 3: Here. You can just feel the techno hippie culture dripping

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Speaker 3: off of this. It's very it's a very West Coast product.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah. And at the same time, like think about it,

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Speaker 2: It's ninety two. A new millennium is coming, and it's

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Speaker 2: coming fast, and so there are a lot of ideas

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Speaker 2: about like what is going to happen, How are we

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Speaker 2: transforming for this new millennium, How is technology going to

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Speaker 2: change us? How can we elevate ourselves through it? So

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Speaker 2: there's a you know, there's always a certain amount of anxiety, obviously,

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Speaker 2: but there is also a certain amount of technological optimism

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Speaker 2: that's very strong, especially in beyond the Mind's eye.

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Speaker 3: I mean, it's quite literally promising to take you to

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Speaker 3: new realms. There is even today, looking back on it now,

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Speaker 3: a genuinely infectious sense of exploration and enthusiasm for the

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Speaker 3: new and the weird in it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, you can also see

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Speaker 2: other examples of this, you know, sort of like trance

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Speaker 2: music culture taking up various sort of futurism ideas, you know,

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Speaker 2: thinking about the blending of say, you know, trance music

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Speaker 2: and the writings of Terence mckinna and so forth. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: I feel like Beyond the Mind's Eye seems to set

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Speaker 2: right alongside that. And also the title is just so perfect.

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Speaker 2: I'm always a little bit shocked to realize that it's

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Speaker 2: called Beyond the Mind's Eye because it's the second in

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Speaker 2: a series and the first was just the Mind's Eye.

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Speaker 2: Because Beyond the Mind's Eye is perfect because there is

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Speaker 2: this sense that like it is promising to show you

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Speaker 2: things that you cannot imagine yet like it takes this

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Speaker 2: technological evolution in order for us to even conceive of

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Speaker 2: these ideas, you know, like that's that's how this hit,

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Speaker 2: that's how this felt back in the nineties.

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Speaker 3: Well, as Professor Brian Oblivion taught us the television screen

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Speaker 3: is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, it is

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Speaker 3: part of the physical structure of the brain. And so

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Speaker 3: by showing you this movie, they are offering you a

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Speaker 3: brain upgrade. That's what it feels like.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And so hopefully we'll be able to hold on

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Speaker 2: to that as we continue discussing this film, because on

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Speaker 2: one level, we do have to look at it as

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Speaker 2: a thing that doesn't hit the same anymore, that is

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Speaker 2: going to feel more uncanny than it did, that is

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Speaker 2: going to feel rougher around the edges than it did

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Speaker 2: back in the day. But at the same time, I

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Speaker 2: just want to be clear that nobody can discount how

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Speaker 2: impressive this felt back in the early nineties, and it

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Speaker 2: is a snapshot of cutting edge technological artistic achievement of

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Speaker 2: that time period.

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Speaker 3: Well, despite the tremendous advancements in what's possible with computer

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Speaker 3: animation since then. I would kind of have a hard

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Speaker 3: time imagining someone could watch this and not sort of

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Speaker 3: love it. Now, Yeah, yeah, what what is there to

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Speaker 3: not like about Beyond the Mind's Eye?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's gonna I think. On one hand, the music,

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Speaker 2: of course still stands there. Jon Hammer's music is tremendous

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Speaker 2: and so that's going to pull you in and if

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Speaker 2: nothing else, it's going to relax you. The images are

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Speaker 2: going to relax you. There's nothing here that can hurt you.

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Speaker 2: This movie is like a nice, warm hug. It spoons

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Speaker 2: you for its runtime of what an hour and some change,

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Speaker 2: and yeah, you can you can giggle a little bit

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Speaker 2: at how some of the effects hold up today, but

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Speaker 2: it's it's still it's still impressive, all right now. Sadly,

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Speaker 2: I could not find a rip of the TV spot

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Speaker 2: for Beyond the Mind's Eye, either to include or just

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Speaker 2: to re experience it, because I know I must have

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Speaker 2: seen this commercial hundreds of times back in the day,

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Speaker 2: but as far as I could tell, nobody has ripped

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Speaker 2: it in upload. So that's a shame.

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Speaker 3: I went looking for that as well and could not

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Speaker 3: find it.

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Speaker 2: Now. Fortunately you can find the film itself. There are

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Speaker 2: a lot of streaming options for it out on the web,

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Speaker 2: and you can still buy it on DVD. That's assuming

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Speaker 2: you don't want to go retro and get yourself a

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Speaker 2: VHS or a laser disc.

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Speaker 3: I know we've talked about this before, but when are

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Speaker 3: laser discs going to come back in the same way

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Speaker 3: Vinyl has. It just feels right, doesn't it, that we'd

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Speaker 3: go back.

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Speaker 2: To laser It seems like there would be There probably

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Speaker 2: are a laser disc enthusiasts out there. I know for

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Speaker 2: a while they held on because there were still certain

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Speaker 2: films and there. This may still be the case where

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Speaker 2: there had not been a release superior to the laser

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Speaker 2: disc release, So I'm not sure. All right, Well, let's

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Speaker 2: briefly talk about some of the folks involved here. This

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Speaker 2: is going to be a little different than usual because

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Speaker 2: we have no human cast, but we do have there

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Speaker 2: are We're ultimately a lot of humans involved in this.

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Speaker 2: We're not going to highlight all of them. But credited

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Speaker 2: as the director and as an editor on this film

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Speaker 2: is Michael Boydstone. The same year, he had also worked

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Speaker 2: with musician Pete Bardens I believe of Camel Fame on

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Speaker 2: a project called Watercolors. I wasn't able to find streaming

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Speaker 2: content of this, but it apparently combined footage of running

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Speaker 2: water from Yellowstone with Pete Barden's music. Boydston would go

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Speaker 2: on to work with Thomas Dolby on nineteen ninety four's

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Speaker 2: The Gate to the Mind's Eye, which he also directed.

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Speaker 2: And he also worked on a project called Televoid in

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Speaker 2: ninety seven, which I'm not saying. I think it's an

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Speaker 2: unrelated project that does similar things like using different different

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Speaker 2: computer animated shorts and sort of stitching them together into

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Speaker 2: a cohesive full picture.

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Speaker 3: Did Boydston work on the Mindseie movie that had Kansas

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Speaker 3: music by Kansas?

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Speaker 2: I don't think he did have to. You know, there

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Speaker 2: are different people involved in these Different people did the music,

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Speaker 2: like Thomas Dolby again was on the Gate to the

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Speaker 2: Mind's Eye, but he Boydsten went on to work on

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Speaker 2: a number of educational programs, including at least one episode

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Speaker 2: of Bill and I The Science Guy, as well as

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Speaker 2: a series called Diz Kids, and he served as cinematographer

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Speaker 2: on various TV and film projects, including the twenty sixteen

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Speaker 2: film Beta Test starring Manu Bennett. And I wasn't able

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Speaker 2: to find much else about like his role in this

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Speaker 2: production and how it went down. So I was looking

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Speaker 2: around and I found his contact information. I reached out

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Speaker 2: to him and I was like, hey, can we ask

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Speaker 2: you a few questions about Beyond the Mind's Eye? And

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Speaker 2: he said, he said, sure, you know it feels like

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Speaker 2: several lifetimes ago, but I'd be up for that, so

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Speaker 2: we sent him some questions. As of this recording time,

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Speaker 2: we have not heard back from him, but if we

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Speaker 2: hear back from him before publication, we'll tack it on

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Speaker 2: at the end of this episode, and if he gets

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Speaker 2: back to us after the episode is published, well, then

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Speaker 2: we'll include it in a future listener mail segment. I

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Speaker 2: can't wait to know more, all right, we already mentioned

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Speaker 2: Jon Hamer born nineteen forty eight check American musician, composer,

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Speaker 2: and record producer again, best known for his tracks Miami

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Speaker 2: Vice Theme and Crockett's Theme, both from the nineteen eighty

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Speaker 2: series Miamivice Again. Crockett's theme especially is just incredible. That's

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Speaker 2: when you just need a You've probably heard it before,

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Speaker 2: but if you haven't, go listen to it. Tremendous track.

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Speaker 2: He won two Grammy Awards for the Miami Vice Theme song.

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Speaker 2: His other scores include two episodes of Tales from the Crypt,

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Speaker 2: night Rider two thousand, nineteen ninety six is Beastmester three,

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Speaker 2: The I of Bracus, and of course that nineteen ninety

399
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Speaker 2: Dolph Lugrean film I Come In Piece aka Dark Angel,

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Speaker 2: which we previously discussed on Weird House Cinema.

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Speaker 3: Before recording this episode, we were both watching a news

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Speaker 3: segment where Jan Hamer was being interviewed primarily about his

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Speaker 3: work on Beyond the Mind's Eye. Before for the interview began,

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Speaker 3: there was just the sickest ever clip of him absolutely

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Speaker 3: shredding a strap on keyboard what you might be tempted

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Speaker 3: to call a key tar, but I don't know if

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Speaker 3: he called it a key tar.

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Speaker 2: I've seen it referred to as a signature model link

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Speaker 2: keyboard and maybe our synth junkies can chime in more

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Speaker 2: on that, but I've read that, like one of the

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Speaker 2: things about him is the Yeah, he's very much a

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Speaker 2: keyboard synth guy, and he developed in augmented a way

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Speaker 2: so that he could jam out on a keyboard like

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Speaker 2: it was a guitar, like with the energy of rocking

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Speaker 2: out to a guitar, and as someone who cannot rock

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Speaker 2: out on a keyboard or a guitar, I can't really

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Speaker 2: speak to the differences there. Joe, you have guitar experience,

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Speaker 2: maybe you can tell us what that might entail.

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Speaker 3: Oh well, I mean performing with a guitar can be

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Speaker 3: a kind of fun sort of semi athletic thing because

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Speaker 3: you're standing up. You can run around with it, and

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Speaker 3: you can sort of dance while you're playing it. Yes,

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Speaker 3: you can sort of dance while playing a keyboard. I

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Speaker 3: have less experience there because I can barely play the keyboard,

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Speaker 3: so I don't I don't know. Yeah, you can't run

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Speaker 3: around with keyboard unless you turn it into a strap

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Speaker 3: on keyboard, like like this thing that I'm tempted to

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Speaker 3: call a guitar.

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Speaker 2: I guess, like thinking of clips, I've seen of spirited

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Speaker 2: guitar players and spirited keyboard players, because there are some

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Speaker 2: very spirited keyboard players, you know. I mean there's a

432
00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:27,679
Speaker 2: different type of rocking out that it can occur. I

433
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:30,240
Speaker 2: guess you can if you're like really rocking out on

434
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:32,639
Speaker 2: the on the synth or the keyboard, like you're still

435
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:36,760
Speaker 2: localized to that machine. You can't like run the stage

436
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:37,600
Speaker 2: or anything, so.

437
00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 3: Right, you can kind of headbang, I guess while you're playing,

438
00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:43,719
Speaker 3: but yeah, your feet need to stay roughly where they

439
00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:45,439
Speaker 3: are now.

440
00:24:45,520 --> 00:24:49,560
Speaker 2: Johanhamer's music is widely available on music streaming platforms, and

441
00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:52,800
Speaker 2: that includes Beyond the Mind's Eye as an album. You

442
00:24:52,800 --> 00:24:55,240
Speaker 2: can listen to it on you know, Apple Music, Spotify,

443
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:57,800
Speaker 2: wherever you get your digital music. He has a lot

444
00:24:57,840 --> 00:24:59,439
Speaker 2: of other track I was going through some of his

445
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:03,080
Speaker 2: other album and taking him in. There's a nineteen seventy

446
00:25:03,119 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 2: five album of his title The First Seven Days, and

447
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:09,600
Speaker 2: there's a track on there titled Light Slash Sun, and

448
00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:12,400
Speaker 2: I thought it was very good, all right. The producer

449
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:15,359
Speaker 2: of Beyond the Mind's Eye was Stephen Churchill born nineteen

450
00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:18,879
Speaker 2: fifty seven. He produced, I believe all of the Mind's

451
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:22,080
Speaker 2: Eye videos, beginning with nineteen nineties The Mind's Eye, followed

452
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:24,920
Speaker 2: by this film, and then ninety four is The Gate

453
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:27,359
Speaker 2: to the Mind's Eye, ninety six is Odyssey into the

454
00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:31,920
Speaker 2: Mind's Eye, ninety seven's Computer Animation Showcase, nineteen ninety eight's

455
00:25:31,920 --> 00:25:36,240
Speaker 2: Ancient Alien, and nineteen ninety eight's Computer Animation Celebration. I

456
00:25:36,280 --> 00:25:39,480
Speaker 2: don't know why the the title breakdowns seems too much.

457
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:42,240
Speaker 2: At this point, we're no longer talking about the Mind's Eye.

458
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:45,840
Speaker 2: He previously worked as an animator on Disney's The Black

459
00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:49,120
Speaker 2: Cauldron in nineteen eighty five. He was a character designer

460
00:25:49,119 --> 00:25:51,480
Speaker 2: on The Great Mouse Detective in eighty six, a background

461
00:25:51,600 --> 00:25:54,280
Speaker 2: artist on Oliver and Company in eighty eight and an

462
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:57,399
Speaker 2: in between artist on The Little Mermaid in nineteen eighty nine.

463
00:25:57,680 --> 00:25:59,679
Speaker 3: I remember the Great Mate. He was a character designer.

464
00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:03,160
Speaker 3: The Great Mouse Detective had some extremely scary characters when

465
00:26:03,160 --> 00:26:06,160
Speaker 3: I was little, at least I remember I rented that one,

466
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:08,800
Speaker 3: and there's this bat with sharp teeth on it that

467
00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:13,280
Speaker 3: freaked me out. Also, it has a rat villain voiced

468
00:26:13,359 --> 00:26:16,000
Speaker 3: by Vincent Price, I think, who gets very scary at

469
00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 3: the end.

470
00:26:16,720 --> 00:26:20,000
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that is definitely a Vincent Price role,

471
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:22,400
Speaker 2: and he is quite good. I'm trying to remember who

472
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:27,520
Speaker 2: voiced the bat. Nobody ever heard of Candy Candido, not

473
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:30,040
Speaker 2: a I believe he was a radio performer and voice actor,

474
00:26:30,080 --> 00:26:33,600
Speaker 2: but I don't have a lot of familiarity with his work.

475
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 3: Well, the two villainous rodents in this movie were They

476
00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:40,640
Speaker 3: both freaked me out when I was young, So so

477
00:26:40,680 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 3: maybe he designed them.

478
00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:44,480
Speaker 2: And then ne was Sherlock Holmes in that?

479
00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:45,359
Speaker 3: Oh really?

480
00:26:45,560 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 2: Yeah?

481
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:49,600
Speaker 3: Oh wait, but Sherlock Holmes is just like the human

482
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:52,399
Speaker 3: who happens to live in the room above the basle

483
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 3: The Great Mouse Detective.

484
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:55,880
Speaker 2: I think you're right. It's been a long time since

485
00:26:55,920 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 2: I've seen it.

486
00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:59,080
Speaker 3: Like it's not primarily an adventure about Sherlock Holmes. It

487
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 3: is about his mouse equivalent, Basel though whatever.

488
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Black Cauldron is when I've been tempted to revisit,

489
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:08,360
Speaker 2: but I have not yet gotten around to it. It's

490
00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:11,120
Speaker 2: got some great dark fantasy elements to it, but it's

491
00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:14,560
Speaker 2: not one that I think was well regarded at the

492
00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 2: time of its release, and I don't know if people

493
00:27:16,520 --> 00:27:19,520
Speaker 2: have warmed up to it or not now. Obviously, this

494
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:24,320
Speaker 2: project encompasses the computer effects work of various individuals, and

495
00:27:24,359 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 2: again we're not going to be able to have time

496
00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 2: to really do justice to everyone, but we'll reference some

497
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:31,359
Speaker 2: of them as they come up. I know that in

498
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:35,800
Speaker 2: the movie databases, the Flora section is credited to yo

499
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:40,120
Speaker 2: Chiro Kawaguchi, and Journey to the Fourth Dimension is credited

500
00:27:40,119 --> 00:27:43,280
Speaker 2: to Rick Harper and David Thornton. But of course, is

501
00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 2: that that's just some of the people involved in this,

502
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:47,040
Speaker 2: and there are many others.

503
00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:49,960
Speaker 3: Now, as we said earlier, the movie is sort of

504
00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:53,399
Speaker 3: you could kind of think of it as like just

505
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:56,919
Speaker 3: a series of music videos. So that's a little misleading

506
00:27:57,000 --> 00:28:01,040
Speaker 3: because they're they do kind of have an narrative flow

507
00:28:01,119 --> 00:28:04,120
Speaker 3: in a way, but they are a it's a series

508
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:08,400
Speaker 3: of discrete musical numbers on the soundtrack that are each

509
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:12,640
Speaker 3: paired with an animation sequence that maybe sort of one

510
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:16,760
Speaker 3: continuous theme throughout, or might just be just a Shmorgus

511
00:28:16,760 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 3: board of imagery.

512
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:20,600
Speaker 2: That's right. And you know, the interesting thing is, like

513
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 2: any anthology, we kind of have a host. Yeah, we

514
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:27,360
Speaker 2: have we have something or someone that is going to

515
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:30,159
Speaker 2: introduce us to the concept of beyond the mind's eye.

516
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 3: We get a floating virtual bald head with these you know,

517
00:28:34,160 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 3: polygons on its surface. It almost looks I don't know

518
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:39,960
Speaker 3: if you caught the same thing. Maybe I'm out of

519
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:41,640
Speaker 3: my mind here, but it looks almost kind of like

520
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:43,400
Speaker 3: a floating Jeff Bezos head.

521
00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, there's a little bit of Bezos to it.

522
00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:50,840
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I think that's a strong comparison.

523
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 3: Anyway, the bezos head tells us you are now entering

524
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 3: a world inside the essence of your imagination, look within

525
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 3: your dreammes. They can take you beyond the mind's eye.

526
00:29:05,360 --> 00:29:08,320
Speaker 3: And then we begin to zoom. We begin to zoom

527
00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:13,360
Speaker 3: through just a tunnel of textures and colors and things

528
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:16,360
Speaker 3: start to pop out at us. And it is a

529
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 3: fairly overwhelming experience. At first, you're just like plunging down

530
00:29:20,800 --> 00:29:25,480
Speaker 3: this tunnel into darkness with colors emerging from out of everywhere,

531
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 3: and you don't even know what you're looking at, and

532
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:29,520
Speaker 3: you can't quite make sense of it. And by the

533
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:33,040
Speaker 3: time you sort of focus on one shape and image,

534
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:36,680
Speaker 3: it's turning into something else. And I can see why

535
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:40,480
Speaker 3: they put this animated segment first, because even in retrospect,

536
00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 3: it kind of takes your breath away, and I'm sure

537
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety two you'd just be like, Wow, I

538
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:48,760
Speaker 3: can't even begin to describe what I'm looking at.

539
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:51,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, because especially if you're watching this on VHS, you

540
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:54,240
Speaker 2: can't just skip to the next chapter. You'd have to

541
00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:57,200
Speaker 2: fast forward through stuff, and so it really needs to

542
00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:01,280
Speaker 2: hit hard immediately, and it does. Just lots shifting psychedelic

543
00:30:01,320 --> 00:30:07,280
Speaker 2: CGI landscapes, fractals and particles, virtual reality bodies, including a

544
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 2: pair of lovers who merge in their love making into

545
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 2: a single extra dimensional dragonfly. And then there's a butterfly,

546
00:30:15,120 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 2: a bird, a terosaur, a haunted castle, an electric vortex,

547
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:22,960
Speaker 2: and then finally like a reading rainbow butterfly.

548
00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:25,920
Speaker 3: I love when it turns into the haunted castle, because

549
00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:28,480
Speaker 3: that has nothing to do with anything that came before.

550
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 3: But suddenly we're in Spirit Halloween and this is just

551
00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:35,480
Speaker 3: an animated castle. It's a whoo and bats flying through

552
00:30:35,520 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 3: the sky. But then when we get close to the bats,

553
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 3: we realize they're not bats, they're terosaurs with devil tongues.

554
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:46,040
Speaker 3: And one of the terosaurs crashes into the quote camera

555
00:30:46,280 --> 00:30:48,800
Speaker 3: and breaks the glass of the lens, sort of just

556
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:54,040
Speaker 3: spiderwebs of fracture across the screen, and then the does

557
00:30:54,080 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 3: the terrator kind of like slide down like a It

558
00:30:57,720 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 3: does like a bug smeared on a windshield.

559
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:04,520
Speaker 2: So, on one hand, this whole intro bit feels very demo,

560
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:07,440
Speaker 2: you know. It feels like they're saying someone is saying,

561
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:10,719
Speaker 2: look what CGI can do for you. But on the

562
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 2: other hand, we are definitely seeing parts of a sequence

563
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:19,360
Speaker 2: from the nineteen ninety two film The lawnmower Man. This,

564
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:23,880
Speaker 2: of course, was a science fiction horror movie directed by

565
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:28,240
Speaker 2: Brett Leonard and originally sort of kind of based on

566
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 2: a Stephen King's story, but I believe he was able

567
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:32,920
Speaker 2: to get his name taken off of that. The original

568
00:31:32,960 --> 00:31:36,280
Speaker 2: lawnmower Man short story is very creepy but has nothing

569
00:31:36,320 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 2: to do with virtual reality or computers.

570
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've looked at this up before. I think the

571
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:44,600
Speaker 3: movie has nothing to do with this story except that

572
00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:47,200
Speaker 3: there is a guy who operates a lawnmower. That's it.

573
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:50,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so there's a scene I had to go.

574
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 2: I was able to find this online include a link

575
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:55,240
Speaker 2: for here, jove you wanted to check it out. But

576
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 2: there's a sequence in The lawnmower Man where the character

577
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:03,760
Speaker 2: job Smith played by Jeff fay uh he had he

578
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 2: invites his girlfriend Marnie Burke played by Jenny Wright, to, hey,

579
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:12,120
Speaker 2: come join me in the cyber realm for some of

580
00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:14,920
Speaker 2: the cyber sex. And so they're in these you know,

581
00:32:15,280 --> 00:32:18,640
Speaker 2: virtual reality harnesses, and then we see in the virtual

582
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:22,680
Speaker 2: realm they are these two lovers that you know, embrace

583
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:25,440
Speaker 2: each other and then they sort of like merge with

584
00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 2: each other become a dragonfly. But in The lawnmower Man,

585
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 2: this sequence takes a dark turn. She like gets stuck

586
00:32:33,200 --> 00:32:36,560
Speaker 2: in the like the ground or something, and then she

587
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:39,800
Speaker 2: starts freaking out and he turns into a monster and

588
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 2: eats her. So we do not see anybody turn into

589
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:46,120
Speaker 2: a monster and beyond the mind's eye because Obviously that

590
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:48,480
Speaker 2: doesn't fit the vibe here. This is not this is

591
00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:51,960
Speaker 2: not about feeling anxious about technology. This isn't about being

592
00:32:51,960 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 2: afraid that technology is going to eat you. This is

593
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:59,000
Speaker 2: about what technology can transform you into. And it's not

594
00:32:59,080 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 2: a monster. It is you know, the eternity.

595
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:04,760
Speaker 3: Well, but we do go from the cybersex to the

596
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:08,680
Speaker 3: Haunted Castle. But it's I guess nothing bad appears to

597
00:33:08,720 --> 00:33:11,680
Speaker 3: happen to the two lovers on the screen. It's just

598
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:13,480
Speaker 3: like we're looking at something else now, and it is

599
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 3: a haunted castle.

600
00:33:14,560 --> 00:33:17,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, that haunted castle looks inviting though. It's like it's

601
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:19,840
Speaker 2: like you said, spirit Halloween territory. It's like, don't you

602
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:21,920
Speaker 2: want to go over there and meet the fun vampires

603
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:22,480
Speaker 2: that live there?

604
00:33:22,560 --> 00:33:25,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's castle. They give out the full sized candy

605
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:26,640
Speaker 3: bars exactly.

606
00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:31,000
Speaker 2: Now. Multiple individuals and I believe studios worked on the

607
00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:36,040
Speaker 2: CGI sequences for The lawnmower Man, but they include let's see,

608
00:33:36,080 --> 00:33:38,840
Speaker 2: there's a Gimmel Everett, who lived nineteen fifty one through

609
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, who also worked on ninety five's Virtuosity and

610
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

611
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 3: The Virtuosity is the movie with a virtual reality character

612
00:33:49,600 --> 00:33:52,920
Speaker 3: played by Russell Crowe who is a virtual serial killer

613
00:33:53,240 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 3: who comes into the real world. And the main thing

614
00:33:56,200 --> 00:33:58,160
Speaker 3: I remember about it is that the trailer for the

615
00:33:58,200 --> 00:34:01,240
Speaker 3: movie had Russell Crowe walking through mall while playing Stay

616
00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:01,719
Speaker 3: in Alive.

617
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think they basically they three D print him

618
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 2: and he's a carbon based organism with blue blood or

619
00:34:08,640 --> 00:34:09,359
Speaker 2: something like that.

620
00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:12,440
Speaker 3: It's reverse tron is the situation.

621
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:16,919
Speaker 2: Yeah, sounds like a great idea. I think I saw

622
00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:19,319
Speaker 2: it back in the day and I remember enjoying it.

623
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:23,520
Speaker 2: But let's see. We also have Helene Plotkin who also

624
00:34:23,560 --> 00:34:26,879
Speaker 2: worked on something that she's credited for, nineteen ninety one's

625
00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 2: Liquid Television. Liquid Television that was a similar situation where

626
00:34:29,680 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 2: they're bringing in different like short films and other short projects.

627
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:37,400
Speaker 2: And then she also was involved in nineteen ninety nine's

628
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:41,480
Speaker 2: Toy Story two. And then there's Brett Leonard born nineteen

629
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:44,680
Speaker 2: fifty nine, who also worked on Virtuosity and Killer Clowns

630
00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:47,480
Speaker 2: from out He Space. He also directed the music video

631
00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:50,560
Speaker 2: for Peter Gabriel's Kiss That Frog in two thousand and four,

632
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:54,720
Speaker 2: which I had great track, amazing album, big fan of Us.

633
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:58,480
Speaker 2: The other interesting thing about Brett Leonard, who again it's

634
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 2: some connection to this film is that he directed the

635
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:05,920
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine film The Dead Pit, a horror movie

636
00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:09,440
Speaker 2: that is best known to VHS fans for its box

637
00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:14,000
Speaker 2: VHS box with the light up eyes. So look up

638
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 2: an image of this. If you ever went into a

639
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:18,960
Speaker 2: VHS rental store back in the day, you inevitably saw this.

640
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:21,760
Speaker 2: And if the people running the place remember to refresh

641
00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 2: its batteries, it's the eyes on the front of the

642
00:35:24,680 --> 00:35:26,480
Speaker 2: VHS box would light up.

643
00:35:26,760 --> 00:35:29,160
Speaker 3: That's a really good gimmick. I you know, I feel

644
00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:33,120
Speaker 3: I was a connoisseur of VHS boxes in the nineties

645
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 3: in the video store, and I don't remember this.

646
00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's not a I don't think. I

647
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:39,480
Speaker 2: don't know anything about the film itself, and I never

648
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:41,719
Speaker 2: rented it. How could I. I was a child and

649
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:45,880
Speaker 2: this was scary, But you know it's I've seen it

650
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:49,680
Speaker 2: for sale and you know, prize by collectors. So anyway,

651
00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:52,360
Speaker 2: those are just some of the folks that were connected

652
00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:55,920
Speaker 2: to these sequences from The lawnmower Man, which have been

653
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 2: repurposed here in Beyond the Mind's Eye. And this won't

654
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:01,920
Speaker 2: be the last time we see lawnmower man footage in

655
00:36:01,600 --> 00:36:02,560
Speaker 2: this feature.

656
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:06,359
Speaker 3: Okay, well, that's just the introductory segment. We cannot speak

657
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:08,759
Speaker 3: at great length about all of the segments in the movie,

658
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:10,840
Speaker 3: but we'll try to talk about at least most of

659
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:13,200
Speaker 3: them for a bit. The second one I thought was

660
00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:17,120
Speaker 3: also pretty interesting. This one is called Seeds, and it's

661
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 3: an animation on the concept of pan spermia, with like

662
00:36:21,239 --> 00:36:23,440
Speaker 3: a nut or a thing that looks kind of like

663
00:36:23,440 --> 00:36:28,760
Speaker 3: a pumpkin seed flying through space and then landing on Earth.

664
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:30,359
Speaker 3: I don't know why I said a pumpkin seed, because

665
00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:31,960
Speaker 3: it doesn't look like a pumpkin seed. It's some other

666
00:36:32,040 --> 00:36:33,600
Speaker 3: kind of seed. I don't know what seed.

667
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:35,799
Speaker 2: Would you compare it to, rob It's just a big

668
00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:36,600
Speaker 2: old space seed.

669
00:36:36,960 --> 00:36:39,319
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, caraway seed or something. It's a

670
00:36:39,320 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 3: big old seed. It flies through space and then it

671
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:46,160
Speaker 3: plunks down on Earth, and then it gives rise to

672
00:36:46,280 --> 00:36:49,160
Speaker 3: life on Earth, and we see all kinds of just

673
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:52,560
Speaker 3: kind of you know, life dancing about. We see trees

674
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 3: as groovy shape shifting dancing machines. Like the trees to

675
00:36:57,600 --> 00:37:01,280
Speaker 3: the beat of the song, they shift to transform into

676
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:05,240
Speaker 3: different kinds of trees with different arrangements of branches and leaves,

677
00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 3: which again goes back to this morphing concept that we

678
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:11,560
Speaker 3: see throughout this whole thing. So there's all these kinds

679
00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:15,320
Speaker 3: of different representations of life growing and morphing and shifting

680
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:18,440
Speaker 3: and taking these different forms, and then eventually there are

681
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:21,920
Speaker 3: these pods, these plants that grow as pods that end

682
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 3: up shooting seeds back out into space. So it's as

683
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:26,839
Speaker 3: if the cycle continues.

684
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:30,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. Apparently this sequence uses imagery created by computer graphics

685
00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:34,319
Speaker 2: artists and researcher Carl Simms born nineteen sixty two from

686
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:39,160
Speaker 2: his nineteen ninety short Panspermia. He incidentally served as a

687
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:43,440
Speaker 2: producer on the first Minds I release, and this footage

688
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:46,640
Speaker 2: would later be used in the Boydsten directed music video

689
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:51,280
Speaker 2: for Pantera's cover of the Black Sabbath instrumental Planet Caravan,

690
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 2: and you can also find this on YouTube.

691
00:37:53,640 --> 00:37:57,400
Speaker 3: I love Sabbath, I like that song. I did listen

692
00:37:57,440 --> 00:38:00,879
Speaker 3: and watch this, and I don't love the pinter A cover.

693
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:07,359
Speaker 2: I have to say this whole Panspermia section, I felt

694
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:10,360
Speaker 2: like this one felt perhaps more dated by today's standards

695
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:13,240
Speaker 2: than the intro, perhaps because a lot of it hinges

696
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:17,759
Speaker 2: on depictions of natural world organisms like actual plants, actual animals,

697
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:21,400
Speaker 2: And again, what it accomplishes for nineteen ninety or nineteen

698
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:26,279
Speaker 2: ninety two is amazing. But I don't know. On top

699
00:38:26,320 --> 00:38:30,840
Speaker 2: of that, it's not my favorite Hommer track beyond the

700
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:34,200
Speaker 2: Mind's Eye. But things do pick up again when we

701
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:37,360
Speaker 2: get back into the depictions of actual alien pant spermia

702
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 2: with the big seed launching cannon plants and so forth.

703
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Okay. The next segment I thought was interesting

704
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:58,520
Speaker 3: because it's called Afternoon Adventure, and this track incorporates both

705
00:38:58,960 --> 00:39:03,680
Speaker 3: live action and computer animation, and it over lays one

706
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:06,799
Speaker 3: on top of the other, so we get shots. At

707
00:39:06,880 --> 00:39:08,919
Speaker 3: least that's what I think is going on. I don't

708
00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:13,400
Speaker 3: think that's cgi. It couldn't be. No, it is, it seems.

709
00:39:13,520 --> 00:39:16,080
Speaker 3: For example, we get a footage of a real forest

710
00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:19,480
Speaker 3: that is overlaid with animated insects, and we see a

711
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:23,200
Speaker 3: wasp chasing a bee. And what I love is that

712
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:27,120
Speaker 3: the Onhammer track that is paired with this sounds like

713
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 3: chase music from an action film in the eighties or

714
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:32,960
Speaker 3: like from Miami Vice. It's like sick, you know, like

715
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:34,920
Speaker 3: guitar shredding kind of Chase music.

716
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:38,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like like that bee just robbed a bank

717
00:39:38,320 --> 00:39:39,640
Speaker 2: and the wasp is on the case.

718
00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:44,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, Wasp, you're a loose cannon. But this has a

719
00:39:44,960 --> 00:39:47,920
Speaker 3: kind of twist ending actually, So at the you know,

720
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:49,160
Speaker 3: we go around and we see a lot of the

721
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:52,399
Speaker 3: landscape and we end up zooming out in this one,

722
00:39:52,680 --> 00:39:54,520
Speaker 3: and we zoom out and out and out, and we

723
00:39:54,600 --> 00:39:56,560
Speaker 3: go up in the sky and see this whole, you know,

724
00:39:56,600 --> 00:39:59,239
Speaker 3: the contours of the earth and the lakes and the

725
00:39:59,360 --> 00:40:03,280
Speaker 3: rivers and the hills, and we keep zooming out until

726
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:06,880
Speaker 3: we go through a glass barrier and we realized the

727
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:11,839
Speaker 3: landscape where we were watching these insects interact was inside

728
00:40:11,840 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 3: of a dome, a dome in space on the surface

729
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:20,359
Speaker 3: of a barren moon. And there are many domes like it.

730
00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:25,279
Speaker 2: What this is great though, because, yeah, it starts off

731
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:28,239
Speaker 2: seeming like, yeah, bold choice to feature both live action

732
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:31,799
Speaker 2: and computer generated bugs, especially since you know, you really

733
00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 2: can't create a photorealistic bug at this point. But yeah,

734
00:40:36,680 --> 00:40:38,840
Speaker 2: by the time you get to the domes, amazing. This

735
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:42,520
Speaker 2: is exactly what you want out of your CGI imagery

736
00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:45,400
Speaker 2: at this point in time. Let us depict other worlds,

737
00:40:45,480 --> 00:40:48,719
Speaker 2: Let us depict you know, the future show us give

738
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:51,480
Speaker 2: us this revelation, and it does. Now.

739
00:40:51,560 --> 00:40:54,400
Speaker 3: The next segment I think, is called Brave New World.

740
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:59,360
Speaker 3: It is sort of a representation of the insides of

741
00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:04,760
Speaker 3: a computer, but rendered in a dramatic, almost heroic fashion,

742
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 3: And as I was watching it, it actually looked quite

743
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:11,320
Speaker 3: familiar to me, and I started thinking, wait a minute,

744
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:15,160
Speaker 3: is this footage that was created for those Intel Pennium

745
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:16,680
Speaker 3: commercials in the nineties.

746
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:19,440
Speaker 2: It might have been. I was looking around for an example,

747
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:24,000
Speaker 2: and I kept running across other Intel commercials, so I'm

748
00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 2: not sure about that. But yeah, we get dancing, floating

749
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:31,840
Speaker 2: silver squares, and then we enter various geometric shapes, a

750
00:41:31,880 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 2: real kaleidoscope experience, and the track here from Jon Hammer

751
00:41:36,320 --> 00:41:38,319
Speaker 2: is very soothing. But then it picks up the pace

752
00:41:38,360 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 2: as we sail through the insides of a computer, and

753
00:41:40,719 --> 00:41:47,000
Speaker 2: this is where we get into familiar processor commercial territory. Eventually,

754
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:50,799
Speaker 2: a golden titan rises from the computer realm to lift

755
00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:53,760
Speaker 2: up a giant gear and oh, we realized this titan

756
00:41:53,880 --> 00:41:56,200
Speaker 2: is Atlas. And I'm not sure I love the idea

757
00:41:56,239 --> 00:42:02,200
Speaker 2: of computer technology as a shackled, eternally punished titan. I

758
00:42:02,560 --> 00:42:04,399
Speaker 2: don't know exactly what we're trying to portray there.

759
00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:07,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, whether it's the Greek themes or it's going in

760
00:42:07,239 --> 00:42:09,319
Speaker 3: a different direction with some kind of I don't know,

761
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:13,000
Speaker 3: iron Rand meditation. In any case, this one doesn't hit

762
00:42:13,040 --> 00:42:13,680
Speaker 3: so great for me.

763
00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:17,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the Titan looks cool, I will say that.

764
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:20,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's see. After this, there's a segment called I

765
00:42:20,920 --> 00:42:24,280
Speaker 3: think Transformers. This one really looks like a video game,

766
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 3: and I think that's because in part it is reproducing

767
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:31,920
Speaker 3: footage from The lawnmower Man of a video game they

768
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:34,759
Speaker 3: play in the lawnmower Man. And then also I think

769
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:37,280
Speaker 3: we actually just straight up see the Job, a character

770
00:42:37,400 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 3: from lawnmower Man in.

771
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:41,200
Speaker 2: This we do like the raging virtual job.

772
00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:43,840
Speaker 3: Where he's yeah, he's mad.

773
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:46,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then there's I haven't seen The lawnmower Man

774
00:42:47,080 --> 00:42:48,799
Speaker 2: in a while. I didn't didn't have time to watch

775
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:51,200
Speaker 2: it in full for this, but yeah, there's a sequence

776
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:53,440
Speaker 2: in lawnmower Man where they're at an arcade. They're playing

777
00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:55,800
Speaker 2: some sort of like a racing game, and we see

778
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:58,319
Speaker 2: the virtual footage from that part of the film here.

779
00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:02,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, the race part being its people's zoomings through

780
00:43:02,120 --> 00:43:04,920
Speaker 3: a kind of corridor with these closing teeth that you

781
00:43:04,960 --> 00:43:06,719
Speaker 3: have to kind of navigate through gaps in.

782
00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:11,120
Speaker 2: This reminds me there was there was a video game

783
00:43:11,160 --> 00:43:15,879
Speaker 2: tie into the lawnmower Man and MYO. My video game

784
00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 2: capabilities at the time were very limited. I think I

785
00:43:18,120 --> 00:43:20,839
Speaker 2: had a Sega Genesis and they put this game out

786
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:24,400
Speaker 2: on Sega Genesis, and I remember wanting it because basically,

787
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:29,640
Speaker 2: with the limited capacity of the Sega Genesis, they were

788
00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:34,000
Speaker 2: able to create some sort of virtual sections, you know,

789
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:36,440
Speaker 2: where you're like flying around in a three dimensional space,

790
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:40,359
Speaker 2: something that you know, by today's standards is just old hat,

791
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:43,960
Speaker 2: but at the time on Genesis, like it was like, whoa,

792
00:43:44,200 --> 00:43:47,400
Speaker 2: you can do things like that on this machine. I

793
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:49,680
Speaker 2: want in. Even though I don't know how I feel

794
00:43:49,719 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 2: about that movie, I want to play the game. And

795
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:54,439
Speaker 2: to be clear, I think other parts of the game

796
00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 2: were just typical side scrolling, but they had some sort

797
00:43:57,600 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 2: of a gimmicked sort of reality section.

798
00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 3: Okay, oh but wait a minute. This one's called Transformers

799
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:07,400
Speaker 3: and there's something like a transformer in it.

800
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:10,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we do get We do get some sort

801
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:15,239
Speaker 2: of a laser night that's chasing around a transformer like

802
00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:18,279
Speaker 2: a robot that changes into a race car. I don't

803
00:44:18,280 --> 00:44:21,080
Speaker 2: know if this is an actual transformer or a gobot

804
00:44:21,560 --> 00:44:25,360
Speaker 2: or just a general riff on the overall concept, but

805
00:44:25,719 --> 00:44:26,200
Speaker 2: there it is.

806
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:30,640
Speaker 3: Man. So the next segment is one that really was

807
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:33,960
Speaker 3: a hit for me. It's probably the cheesiest segment, or

808
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:36,360
Speaker 3: one of the cheesiest in it, but I loved it,

809
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:40,200
Speaker 3: especially because of how catchy the music is. This is

810
00:44:40,239 --> 00:44:44,600
Speaker 3: the one called Too Far, which has more different imagery

811
00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:48,239
Speaker 3: in it than I can possibly recount here. But it's

812
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:52,520
Speaker 3: got what these sort of jazz design robots playing drums

813
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:56,160
Speaker 3: on a crumbling planet surface with desolate gray buildings. What

814
00:44:56,239 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 3: a weird juxtaposition. So it's like a ray post apocalyptic

815
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:05,480
Speaker 3: world with ruined buildings. But these happy robots made of

816
00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:08,279
Speaker 3: these kind of jazz squiggles are all like, oh boy,

817
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:09,840
Speaker 3: I'm feeling the feeling the groove.

818
00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:13,000
Speaker 2: It's like you had a monkey's paw and you wished

819
00:45:13,120 --> 00:45:18,399
Speaker 2: that windows clip Art became like syndient. You know, we're

820
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:21,440
Speaker 2: not clip art really. What's his name? The paper Clippy Clippy.

821
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:25,480
Speaker 2: It's like Clippy and his like demonic kin were brought

822
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:28,120
Speaker 2: to life and they're here to rock out at least

823
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:30,440
Speaker 2: in theory, but you know it's gonna get violent.

824
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:36,120
Speaker 3: Clip multicolored Clippy family reunion and they're all playing hand drums. Yeah,

825
00:45:36,160 --> 00:45:39,320
Speaker 3: and uh, but then it's not just that. There's also

826
00:45:39,640 --> 00:45:44,000
Speaker 3: an angry looking like hamhead guy sitting watching a TV

827
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 3: and a necktie and he keeps kind of burping and

828
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:49,800
Speaker 3: his head comes off and then it sinks down into

829
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 3: his neck and then it pops off again. And he's

830
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:55,120
Speaker 3: watching things on TV. And we see what he's watching

831
00:45:55,200 --> 00:45:58,960
Speaker 3: on the TV, which is I think, robots on roller coasters.

832
00:45:59,560 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 3: And then there's there's more TV watching themes with something

833
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:06,560
Speaker 3: that's just a straight up eyeball watching a TV. But

834
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:09,400
Speaker 3: then it gets scared and it hides behind the couch.

835
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:13,120
Speaker 2: Ah. You know. The roller coaster, the virtual roller coaster thing,

836
00:46:13,239 --> 00:46:15,920
Speaker 2: of course, has never gotten old like that basically spawned

837
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 2: a whole video game franchise, and I think Regal Cinema

838
00:46:20,120 --> 00:46:22,359
Speaker 2: still rolls that out at the beginning of their seeing

839
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 2: a picture in Regal Cinema. Right, you get to ride

840
00:46:24,400 --> 00:46:26,920
Speaker 2: that virtual roller coaster a little bit. I think some

841
00:46:26,960 --> 00:46:29,200
Speaker 2: people like will put their hands up to get into it.

842
00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:33,719
Speaker 3: You know, I'll do that. Oh and then so this

843
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:37,920
Speaker 3: musical number has some vocals in it. Vocals are not

844
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 3: super prominent in the music throughout this but a couple

845
00:46:41,560 --> 00:46:45,680
Speaker 3: of tracks have vocals. Uh. And the only lyrics you

846
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:48,239
Speaker 3: get in this song, which again the segment is called

847
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:51,359
Speaker 3: too Far. We see these sort of these these three

848
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:55,280
Speaker 3: singers with big hair, all three of them. It's CGI singers.

849
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:56,759
Speaker 3: Of course. I don't know if I needed to say that,

850
00:46:56,840 --> 00:47:01,080
Speaker 3: but yes, these sort of sort of CGI mannic figures

851
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:06,120
Speaker 3: with huge hair, and they're singing too far, take it easy,

852
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:11,160
Speaker 3: It's all right? What are those three phrases? How do

853
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:14,520
Speaker 3: they interlock? Too far? Take it easy, It's all right?

854
00:47:15,160 --> 00:47:17,240
Speaker 2: It's like what the stages of grief or something?

855
00:47:17,320 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 3: Right? Okay? Oh, and then there's like a whole eyeball family.

856
00:47:22,120 --> 00:47:24,520
Speaker 3: Remember there was an eyeball earlier that was watching the

857
00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:27,919
Speaker 3: TV and it got scared. But now there's a whole

858
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:31,040
Speaker 3: family of eyeballs. Is like a mommy and daddy eyeball.

859
00:47:31,080 --> 00:47:33,000
Speaker 3: And then I'm a lot of little eyeballs and they're

860
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:36,319
Speaker 3: all watching the TV, and they're watching a robot on

861
00:47:36,400 --> 00:47:39,319
Speaker 3: TV tell us that we've gone too far. And then

862
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:41,560
Speaker 3: my favorite part of the whole thing is we see

863
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:45,480
Speaker 3: this assembly line inside of a factory that makes terminators.

864
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:49,400
Speaker 3: They're just making terminator exoskeletons, good, pumping out T eight hundreds,

865
00:47:49,719 --> 00:47:56,480
Speaker 3: and then they produce a canned beverage called Too Far Juice.

866
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 3: Funny tie in here. I just on a lark. I

867
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:04,239
Speaker 3: don't know why it even occurred to me to do this.

868
00:48:04,320 --> 00:48:06,759
Speaker 3: I was like, wonder if there's anything in reality called

869
00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:09,719
Speaker 3: Too Far Juice? And I googled it and there is

870
00:48:09,760 --> 00:48:14,720
Speaker 3: a brewery based in Minnesota called the Fair State Brewing

871
00:48:14,760 --> 00:48:18,200
Speaker 3: Cooperative that I've never had a beer from them, so

872
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:20,160
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about them, except they have a

873
00:48:20,200 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 3: beer called Too Far Juice, and I compared it. The

874
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:27,000
Speaker 3: can design looks exactly like this can in beyond the

875
00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:30,280
Speaker 3: mind's eyes. That is a deep reference for a brewery

876
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:31,840
Speaker 3: to make. I don't know how that happened.

877
00:48:32,160 --> 00:48:34,560
Speaker 2: I think it's just because of just all the beer

878
00:48:34,560 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 2: out there. I'm not really a beer enthusiast, but I

879
00:48:37,040 --> 00:48:41,160
Speaker 2: love seeing the variety. There's so many different beers. There's

880
00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:45,320
Speaker 2: so many different like cool names for beers, and you

881
00:48:45,640 --> 00:48:49,440
Speaker 2: even see cool stuff like the Wayland Utani beer. Aspen

882
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 2: beer was finally brought into reality recently as a promotion

883
00:48:54,840 --> 00:48:58,560
Speaker 2: for Alien Romulus by Angel City Brewery, you could finally

884
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:00,880
Speaker 2: get a can of the beer that they're drinking on

885
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:04,240
Speaker 2: the Nostromo in the original nineteen seventy nine Alien film.

886
00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:05,760
Speaker 3: It's very safe to drink.

887
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:10,960
Speaker 2: But yeah, this does seem like a much deeper cut.

888
00:49:11,200 --> 00:49:14,560
Speaker 2: Too Far Juice seems that maybe a bit too far.

889
00:49:14,680 --> 00:49:16,399
Speaker 2: I don't know how many people who drank it really

890
00:49:16,400 --> 00:49:19,040
Speaker 2: caught the reference, but you know, tip of the hat

891
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 2: to those that did.

892
00:49:20,280 --> 00:49:23,000
Speaker 3: If I'm ever visiting Minnesota, I'm gonna have to get

893
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:24,280
Speaker 3: me a too Far Juice.

894
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:27,520
Speaker 2: Well, this whole segment here of beyond the mind's eye,

895
00:49:27,560 --> 00:49:30,520
Speaker 2: this one really made me want my MTV. This felt very,

896
00:49:31,200 --> 00:49:35,400
Speaker 2: very in line with the Dire Straits video Yes for

897
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 2: Money for Nothing. Yeah, so that's the vibe I got here.

898
00:49:39,440 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah. Let's see. Now there are still more segments

899
00:49:43,680 --> 00:49:45,800
Speaker 3: to talk about. There's one called Windows. It's kind of

900
00:49:45,840 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 3: a change of pace because this one is fairly melancholy,

901
00:49:48,760 --> 00:49:51,799
Speaker 3: like most of the others are I don't know, the

902
00:49:51,840 --> 00:49:53,759
Speaker 3: others are jaunty here, they're you know, more of a

903
00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:58,359
Speaker 3: kind of a spirit of fun or excitement. This one

904
00:49:58,480 --> 00:50:01,560
Speaker 3: is a little bit down tim and a little bit sad,

905
00:50:01,640 --> 00:50:04,840
Speaker 3: and we see a room full of paintings and wine

906
00:50:04,880 --> 00:50:07,799
Speaker 3: bottles and a lute, and then the lute floats off

907
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:10,040
Speaker 3: of the wall, and then everything starts floating in the

908
00:50:10,120 --> 00:50:13,440
Speaker 3: air and flying around, and there's a guitar solo, and

909
00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:17,239
Speaker 3: it ends sort of with classic classical two D paintings

910
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:22,280
Speaker 3: like van Goffs self portrait peeling out into three dimensions.

911
00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:23,879
Speaker 2: And this effect is pretty cool. I thought this held

912
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:26,920
Speaker 2: up pretty good. It doesn't feel as dated as as

913
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 2: a lot of things inherently feel dated in this picture.

914
00:50:31,080 --> 00:50:33,440
Speaker 2: And I like the music here, especially the early goings

915
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:35,879
Speaker 2: of it are very chill, very gentle. The gentle young

916
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:37,240
Speaker 2: hammer agree.

917
00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:40,880
Speaker 3: Now the gentle themes continue because the next segment is

918
00:50:40,960 --> 00:50:43,880
Speaker 3: quite tender. It's like a love story, and it actually

919
00:50:43,880 --> 00:50:47,560
Speaker 3: has dialogue. We didn't have that since the intro. So

920
00:50:47,600 --> 00:50:50,279
Speaker 3: the music here it's called nothing but Love, and it

921
00:50:50,320 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 3: sounds kind of like soft acoustic guitar. We meet two

922
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:57,600
Speaker 3: different characters named Latta and Arturo, and we see a

923
00:50:57,680 --> 00:51:00,720
Speaker 3: note on the wall that says a lot of birthday,

924
00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:05,520
Speaker 3: see you at seven, virtually yours Arturo. So I guess

925
00:51:05,520 --> 00:51:09,320
Speaker 3: these are characters that know they are. They're conscious self

926
00:51:09,320 --> 00:51:13,680
Speaker 3: consciously virtual characters, but they're both sort of red tinted

927
00:51:13,800 --> 00:51:19,080
Speaker 3: CGI bodies. Arturo comes in and meets Lata, and then

928
00:51:19,120 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 3: he offers her a magic checkered cube kind of like

929
00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:26,120
Speaker 3: a Rubik's cube that turns into a flying, liquid metal snake.

930
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:30,759
Speaker 3: And then Lota turns old and looks mad, and then

931
00:51:30,800 --> 00:51:34,160
Speaker 3: we get dialogue and she says, I don't want your sculptures.

932
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:37,920
Speaker 3: I love you, and then they kiss and then they

933
00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:41,240
Speaker 3: twirl and then they melt together as liquid metal.

934
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:44,759
Speaker 2: That's what love in the virtual realm consists of. I

935
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:46,279
Speaker 2: guess we have kind of This is like an Adam

936
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:48,800
Speaker 2: and Eve sort of thing. Right is the red sculpture

937
00:51:48,800 --> 00:51:51,400
Speaker 2: and Apple the snake? Self explanatory?

938
00:51:52,120 --> 00:51:56,160
Speaker 3: Okay, I didn't think about that. The next one is great.

939
00:51:56,200 --> 00:51:59,080
Speaker 3: It's called Pyramid. I love this one. It's got some

940
00:51:59,280 --> 00:52:03,360
Speaker 3: interesting kind of flute sounds. It sounds almost kind of

941
00:52:03,400 --> 00:52:06,239
Speaker 3: South American or something. And then it's got like a

942
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:11,759
Speaker 3: dog chasing butterflies, these strange marionette gods dancing on top

943
00:52:11,800 --> 00:52:14,680
Speaker 3: of a pyramid with a yellow flaming sky. This is

944
00:52:14,719 --> 00:52:17,800
Speaker 3: the one that's got a lady with like leopard print

945
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:20,759
Speaker 3: on her flesh. At one point, she says, we are

946
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:21,960
Speaker 3: of the butterfly.

947
00:52:22,800 --> 00:52:25,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's inherently trippy and cryptic. But the

948
00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:29,279
Speaker 2: dancing gods or statues or whatever they are, these were monstrous,

949
00:52:30,360 --> 00:52:34,400
Speaker 2: but in the sense too that like they're moving in

950
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:39,400
Speaker 2: a way that maybe trying to pattern like human dance movements,

951
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:42,279
Speaker 2: but it just feels very clunky and inhuman. But I

952
00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:44,160
Speaker 2: don't know that kind of works. If these are gods,

953
00:52:44,480 --> 00:52:48,040
Speaker 2: why not. They're not of our world, And generally I

954
00:52:48,120 --> 00:52:52,480
Speaker 2: like the other worldliness of this section, you know, strange pyramids,

955
00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:58,239
Speaker 2: weird gods, talking leopard ladies. I'm all for it. You know.

956
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:01,120
Speaker 3: I've got a real beef with be on the mind side, though,

957
00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:03,399
Speaker 3: which is that up to this point there have been

958
00:53:03,680 --> 00:53:08,520
Speaker 3: not nearly enough human bodies with horse heads. They're about

959
00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:11,400
Speaker 3: to do me right here. So Theater of Magic is

960
00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:14,399
Speaker 3: the next segment. It's got everything you want. It's got

961
00:53:14,480 --> 00:53:17,759
Speaker 3: mirrors with masks flying around inside them. It's got a

962
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:20,680
Speaker 3: theater lobby staircase. So it's like that animation at the

963
00:53:20,719 --> 00:53:22,920
Speaker 3: movie Theater where you go out of the It shows

964
00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:24,960
Speaker 3: you going out of the theater and out the staircase

965
00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:28,560
Speaker 3: down the staircase to the lobby to get some refreshments. Here,

966
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:31,360
Speaker 3: it's the opposite. You're going up the staircase in the lobby.

967
00:53:32,160 --> 00:53:34,680
Speaker 3: And then we see a marble statue of a man

968
00:53:34,840 --> 00:53:37,920
Speaker 3: playing an obo at a marble lion, which comes to

969
00:53:38,080 --> 00:53:41,680
Speaker 3: life on an alien planet, jumps over a flaming brazier,

970
00:53:41,880 --> 00:53:44,400
Speaker 3: goes into a maze, and then we see a volcano

971
00:53:44,520 --> 00:53:48,080
Speaker 3: explode and this turns into a metallic woman with a

972
00:53:48,120 --> 00:53:48,719
Speaker 3: horse head.

973
00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:53,200
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I love I love this. I love the creatures,

974
00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:57,719
Speaker 2: the weird landscapes, the virtual reality zooms, the labyrinth, that

975
00:53:57,920 --> 00:54:01,240
Speaker 2: volcano spewing dianetics everywhere, great stuff.

976
00:54:01,680 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Oh, and this is the one that's got

977
00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:07,520
Speaker 3: the eyeball metronomes. At one point, we're just on a

978
00:54:07,560 --> 00:54:11,520
Speaker 3: planet surface and they're metronomes ticking everywhere, and they've got

979
00:54:11,520 --> 00:54:15,040
Speaker 3: eyeballs at the top of the ticker whatever you call that,

980
00:54:15,200 --> 00:54:18,120
Speaker 3: the I don't know what it's called, the part that

981
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:21,080
Speaker 3: ticks on a metronome. It's like Easter Island, but with

982
00:54:21,120 --> 00:54:25,640
Speaker 3: eyeball metronomes. And then we see a Golden War galley

983
00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 3: rowing into space. Hey, connecting to recent episodes, this is

984
00:54:29,280 --> 00:54:31,080
Speaker 3: was this a triream. I don't think so. It just

985
00:54:31,080 --> 00:54:32,560
Speaker 3: looks like one level of ores.

986
00:54:32,600 --> 00:54:35,960
Speaker 2: To me, this looked like, yeah, we have elements of

987
00:54:36,040 --> 00:54:40,239
Speaker 2: sort of fantasy Viking here. We Yeah, this is take

988
00:54:40,280 --> 00:54:42,520
Speaker 2: it for what it is. It's a crazy space galley

989
00:54:42,920 --> 00:54:43,880
Speaker 2: and it is amazing.

990
00:54:44,160 --> 00:54:46,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so we also in this one gets some

991
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:50,440
Speaker 3: mixing of live action shots of locations and models, like

992
00:54:50,480 --> 00:54:53,840
Speaker 3: a room and a house with CGI and then a

993
00:54:53,960 --> 00:54:58,000
Speaker 3: landscape with green clouds and lightning. I recall this one

994
00:54:58,080 --> 00:54:59,200
Speaker 3: kind of ends abruptly.

995
00:55:00,200 --> 00:55:03,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, some of them do. Like, Okay, we've said

996
00:55:03,280 --> 00:55:04,960
Speaker 2: all we can say about this, move on to the

997
00:55:05,000 --> 00:55:05,359
Speaker 2: next one.

998
00:55:05,440 --> 00:55:08,680
Speaker 3: That sort of thing. Okay, very last segment. This one

999
00:55:08,719 --> 00:55:12,000
Speaker 3: starts with space imagery. It depicts a quasar, like a

1000
00:55:12,080 --> 00:55:16,000
Speaker 3: rotating black hole, surrounded by this big disc of orange dust,

1001
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:19,520
Speaker 3: the jets coming out the poles. We see a sea

1002
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:22,680
Speaker 3: scape and there is a mermaid with one of those

1003
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:26,480
Speaker 3: seashell bras and she I noticed this about the mermaid.

1004
00:55:26,560 --> 00:55:30,799
Speaker 3: She's got hinges like her tail, like hinges her fishtail does,

1005
00:55:31,200 --> 00:55:33,239
Speaker 3: which made me think she's supposed to be not an

1006
00:55:33,440 --> 00:55:36,840
Speaker 3: organic mermaid but a toy come to life.

1007
00:55:37,040 --> 00:55:37,399
Speaker 2: I guess.

1008
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:41,440
Speaker 3: So. Yeah, but in any case, she flies into the sky,

1009
00:55:42,080 --> 00:55:45,520
Speaker 3: and then we get a trio of naked male figures

1010
00:55:45,560 --> 00:55:49,520
Speaker 3: without faces, so the interior of the skull is just smooth,

1011
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:54,319
Speaker 3: and they start folding upon themselves and into each other,

1012
00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:59,279
Speaker 3: and it becomes just this kaleidoscopic exercise of folding and

1013
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:02,680
Speaker 3: mixing and blending these naked male forms altogether.

1014
00:56:03,239 --> 00:56:06,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one's pretty cool. You could imagine this playing

1015
00:56:06,120 --> 00:56:08,839
Speaker 2: on the big screen behind you know, your favorite prog

1016
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:09,880
Speaker 2: rock band or something.

1017
00:56:10,160 --> 00:56:12,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then we go to credits, which there are

1018
00:56:12,560 --> 00:56:13,080
Speaker 3: a lot of.

1019
00:56:13,320 --> 00:56:15,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a solid ten minutes of credits. Like

1020
00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:19,440
Speaker 2: I was expecting at least five more minutes of computer

1021
00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:23,799
Speaker 2: animated mayhem, but no, just ten minutes of credits. But

1022
00:56:24,239 --> 00:56:26,760
Speaker 2: that also means ten more minutes of Yon Homer music

1023
00:56:27,200 --> 00:56:29,760
Speaker 2: and it's pretty good. And you know, to their credit

1024
00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:34,280
Speaker 2: they do shout out seemingly everybody involved in the creation

1025
00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:37,680
Speaker 2: of these images, so you know, well worth a look.

1026
00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:49,120
Speaker 3: All right, So we've done a basic outline of the

1027
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:52,040
Speaker 3: content of Beyond the Mind's Eye. But I was so

1028
00:56:52,120 --> 00:56:54,960
Speaker 3: curious about why this movie feels, so I don't know,

1029
00:56:55,080 --> 00:56:58,799
Speaker 3: potent with meaning and historical significance, and so I thought

1030
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:01,520
Speaker 3: we might analyze a little bit here or see what

1031
00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:05,520
Speaker 3: we can come up with at least, And one way

1032
00:57:05,560 --> 00:57:08,800
Speaker 3: of thinking about it that was sticking in my mind

1033
00:57:08,880 --> 00:57:12,640
Speaker 3: is that, you know, I'm pretty strongly persuaded by medium

1034
00:57:12,719 --> 00:57:15,480
Speaker 3: is the message kind of analysis. In other words, I

1035
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:19,440
Speaker 3: think a lot of times the practical functional characteristics of

1036
00:57:19,520 --> 00:57:23,760
Speaker 3: a medium of information delivery often influence are thinking about

1037
00:57:23,800 --> 00:57:28,040
Speaker 3: the world more powerfully than the content of the information delivered.

1038
00:57:28,680 --> 00:57:32,040
Speaker 3: So a classic example of this kind of thinking, I've

1039
00:57:32,080 --> 00:57:33,960
Speaker 3: mentioned this on the show before is the kind of

1040
00:57:34,000 --> 00:57:38,680
Speaker 3: Neil Postman idea that the invention of television had a

1041
00:57:38,840 --> 00:57:43,280
Speaker 3: powerful influence on culture because the format of TV puts

1042
00:57:43,320 --> 00:57:48,480
Speaker 3: a primary emphasis on the entertainment value of information. So

1043
00:57:48,600 --> 00:57:52,280
Speaker 3: what's important is the ability of something to grab and

1044
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:56,480
Speaker 3: hold on to your visual attention, So that when printed

1045
00:57:56,560 --> 00:58:00,520
Speaker 3: news shifted to TV news, you also get a shift

1046
00:58:00,560 --> 00:58:03,840
Speaker 3: in our fundamental concept of news worthiness that what was

1047
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:08,800
Speaker 3: newsworthy became more likely to be synonymous with what's most

1048
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:12,720
Speaker 3: entertaining or attention holding, et cetera. So, thinking with that

1049
00:58:12,800 --> 00:58:15,880
Speaker 3: kind of analysis, I started to wonder, what, if anything,

1050
00:58:16,360 --> 00:58:19,840
Speaker 3: are the distinct messages that are hidden in the medium

1051
00:58:20,080 --> 00:58:24,320
Speaker 3: of computer animation as distinct from the medium of live

1052
00:58:24,360 --> 00:58:28,520
Speaker 3: action film or from traditional animation. One of the things

1053
00:58:28,560 --> 00:58:32,000
Speaker 3: that absolutely stood out to me about it is that

1054
00:58:32,080 --> 00:58:37,240
Speaker 3: there is an incredibly strong theme of absorption running throughout.

1055
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:40,880
Speaker 3: It is hard to watch Beyond the mind's eye and

1056
00:58:40,960 --> 00:58:44,800
Speaker 3: not come away thinking that your essence will somehow be

1057
00:58:45,160 --> 00:58:50,000
Speaker 3: absorbed and subsumed into a kind of metallic goop out

1058
00:58:50,040 --> 00:58:53,280
Speaker 3: of which infinite other forms will be assembled and then

1059
00:58:53,360 --> 00:58:58,320
Speaker 3: liquidated once again. So you are not necessarily discreet. You

1060
00:58:58,360 --> 00:59:02,360
Speaker 3: are a quantity of mold material, which can be both

1061
00:59:02,400 --> 00:59:05,120
Speaker 3: frightening and exciting. The kind of friendly version of this

1062
00:59:05,280 --> 00:59:09,680
Speaker 3: idea is oneness with the universe, but the more the

1063
00:59:09,680 --> 00:59:12,160
Speaker 3: more threatening version is just that kind of like you

1064
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:16,720
Speaker 3: are raw material that something or someone could turn into anything.

1065
00:59:17,400 --> 00:59:20,840
Speaker 2: This reminds me of stuff we've discussed in the show

1066
00:59:20,840 --> 00:59:25,560
Speaker 2: before concerning the ideas of Jaron Lanier that you know

1067
00:59:25,640 --> 00:59:27,600
Speaker 2: when it comes to social media, and that is that

1068
00:59:27,680 --> 00:59:30,160
Speaker 2: you are not the user. You are the product. You're

1069
00:59:30,200 --> 00:59:33,840
Speaker 2: a part of this grand thing, but you were You're

1070
00:59:33,840 --> 00:59:36,120
Speaker 2: not playing the role in it that you thought you were.

1071
00:59:37,400 --> 00:59:41,800
Speaker 2: So so yeah, it's certainly worth thinking about. But I

1072
00:59:41,800 --> 00:59:45,680
Speaker 2: agree there is a tangible desire that is evident in

1073
00:59:45,680 --> 00:59:49,240
Speaker 2: this film that like, you want to be absorbed by

1074
00:59:49,240 --> 00:59:52,640
Speaker 2: a comforting digital world. You know, a strong sense of

1075
00:59:52,640 --> 00:59:57,040
Speaker 2: technological optimism along those lines where about where computer culture

1076
00:59:57,080 --> 00:59:59,880
Speaker 2: is headed, where it can take you, and it does

1077
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:03,720
Speaker 2: don't entertain the possibility that CGI technology will eat us,

1078
01:00:03,920 --> 01:00:06,600
Speaker 2: even though again that's definitely a part of the lawnmower

1079
01:00:06,600 --> 01:00:10,520
Speaker 2: Man sequences that were cut out for Beyond the Mind's Eye.

1080
01:00:10,800 --> 01:00:13,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, there's a fine line between being absorbed and

1081
01:00:13,600 --> 01:00:18,120
Speaker 3: being eaten, I guess. I mean just the absorption themes

1082
01:00:18,120 --> 01:00:21,480
Speaker 3: are more they feel more wholesome and inviting. It's just

1083
01:00:21,520 --> 01:00:23,120
Speaker 3: kind of like, yeah, you're going to become a part

1084
01:00:23,120 --> 01:00:26,080
Speaker 3: of it all, and then all of that will become

1085
01:00:26,160 --> 01:00:27,160
Speaker 3: many other things.

1086
01:00:27,480 --> 01:00:30,040
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting that like kind of ties into some

1087
01:00:30,080 --> 01:00:32,640
Speaker 2: aspects of the psychedelic experience, which of course, you know

1088
01:00:32,640 --> 01:00:36,080
Speaker 2: differs from the person to person. But you know, this

1089
01:00:36,240 --> 01:00:39,120
Speaker 2: idea of interconnectedness, realizing that you're all part of like

1090
01:00:39,200 --> 01:00:43,760
Speaker 2: one people, one planet. You know that all these interpersonal

1091
01:00:43,760 --> 01:00:46,640
Speaker 2: connections are the most valuable things in your life, and

1092
01:00:46,920 --> 01:00:49,560
Speaker 2: there's this idea Okay, well, maybe the future is going

1093
01:00:49,600 --> 01:00:52,760
Speaker 2: to be a technological version of that and it sort

1094
01:00:52,800 --> 01:00:55,520
Speaker 2: of is, but it also sort of isn't, or it

1095
01:00:55,560 --> 01:00:58,120
Speaker 2: can be that with a more negative air to it,

1096
01:00:59,600 --> 01:01:02,840
Speaker 2: you know, it's I guess the reality of something is

1097
01:01:02,880 --> 01:01:08,920
Speaker 2: always like maybe not a complete divorce from the initial optimism,

1098
01:01:09,000 --> 01:01:10,680
Speaker 2: but there are other dimensions to it as well.

1099
01:01:10,920 --> 01:01:14,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can absolutely see that. Man. One thing I

1100
01:01:14,560 --> 01:01:17,000
Speaker 3: really think about that stands out in all this early

1101
01:01:17,080 --> 01:01:23,240
Speaker 3: CGI is the strong communicated idea that the essence of

1102
01:01:23,440 --> 01:01:28,600
Speaker 3: all reality is essentially geometric, that the underlying structure of

1103
01:01:28,680 --> 01:01:32,800
Speaker 3: planets and trees and human beings and music and love

1104
01:01:33,040 --> 01:01:38,840
Speaker 3: and starlight is polyhedrons. And I don't know exactly like

1105
01:01:39,080 --> 01:01:42,120
Speaker 3: if you sort of take on that feeling, how that

1106
01:01:42,240 --> 01:01:45,520
Speaker 3: catches out into values or other beliefs about the world.

1107
01:01:45,920 --> 01:01:48,640
Speaker 3: But it is hard to deny that that is a

1108
01:01:48,680 --> 01:01:53,240
Speaker 3: feeling created by watching this stuff. Everything turns into a

1109
01:01:53,320 --> 01:01:58,080
Speaker 3: series of intersecting angles and lines, and that can create

1110
01:01:58,120 --> 01:02:00,800
Speaker 3: a very elegant feeling, the kind of a kind of

1111
01:02:00,840 --> 01:02:04,640
Speaker 3: mathematical beauty and a sense of symmetry in all that,

1112
01:02:04,800 --> 01:02:08,080
Speaker 3: Like the idea that the world is reducible to geometry,

1113
01:02:08,200 --> 01:02:11,360
Speaker 3: can be a beautiful and romantic way to think about things.

1114
01:02:11,360 --> 01:02:14,400
Speaker 3: And it's also like the functional power of math kind

1115
01:02:14,400 --> 01:02:17,160
Speaker 3: of leads you to think that, Like, I don't know,

1116
01:02:17,280 --> 01:02:19,960
Speaker 3: just thinking of everything as as geometry and math to

1117
01:02:20,000 --> 01:02:24,120
Speaker 3: be manipulated means that like almost anything is possible in reality.

1118
01:02:25,080 --> 01:02:27,800
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm not sure exactly where all that goes.

1119
01:02:27,880 --> 01:02:32,640
Speaker 3: But there's a geometric brain mindset that really gets into

1120
01:02:32,640 --> 01:02:34,320
Speaker 3: you from watching all of this animation.

1121
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:37,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's like everything is coming out of

1122
01:02:37,520 --> 01:02:40,160
Speaker 2: an order, an order that is understood that is literally

1123
01:02:40,200 --> 01:02:44,200
Speaker 2: programmed by human beings, Like almost like we're recreating reality,

1124
01:02:44,200 --> 01:02:47,480
Speaker 2: but it's a reality that makes sense and is understandable

1125
01:02:47,520 --> 01:02:49,480
Speaker 2: and we have full control over.

1126
01:02:50,000 --> 01:02:50,240
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1127
01:02:50,360 --> 01:02:53,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I guess that's one of the advantages of

1128
01:02:53,680 --> 01:02:56,520
Speaker 2: one of the attractions of various like virtual worlds, right,

1129
01:02:56,600 --> 01:02:59,960
Speaker 2: it is like a limited version of the real world

1130
01:03:00,000 --> 01:03:03,280
Speaker 2: world that we have more control over and we know

1131
01:03:03,360 --> 01:03:04,000
Speaker 2: the limits of.

1132
01:03:05,040 --> 01:03:09,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of our level of control. Another thing I

1133
01:03:09,120 --> 01:03:12,520
Speaker 3: was thinking about with beyond the mind's eye and zooming

1134
01:03:12,600 --> 01:03:15,880
Speaker 3: out to the broader issue of CGI as a medium.

1135
01:03:15,920 --> 01:03:19,000
Speaker 3: What is the message of the CGI medium. I was

1136
01:03:19,040 --> 01:03:23,280
Speaker 3: really thinking about the idea of a moving perspective. So

1137
01:03:23,680 --> 01:03:28,640
Speaker 3: in live action and traditional animation, we sometimes have a

1138
01:03:28,720 --> 01:03:32,560
Speaker 3: camera or a perspective that moves through the space that

1139
01:03:32,600 --> 01:03:35,800
Speaker 3: we're looking at. But more often, i'd say at least

1140
01:03:35,800 --> 01:03:38,240
Speaker 3: half the time, you have a static camera or a

1141
01:03:38,440 --> 01:03:43,840
Speaker 3: static perspective with moving subjects. So usually when you're watching

1142
01:03:43,920 --> 01:03:47,360
Speaker 3: other types of media, you are holding still and the

1143
01:03:47,400 --> 01:03:50,320
Speaker 3: subject of the shot is what's in motion. Again, that's changes.

1144
01:03:50,360 --> 01:03:52,240
Speaker 3: You know, there are dolly shots, and there are moving

1145
01:03:52,280 --> 01:03:54,720
Speaker 3: cameras in film and all that. It happens sometimes, but

1146
01:03:54,840 --> 01:03:58,560
Speaker 3: more often you're used to being in one place and

1147
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:03,280
Speaker 3: watching the subject move. When I think about early computer animation,

1148
01:04:04,320 --> 01:04:07,160
Speaker 3: it seems to me that the quote camera, though of

1149
01:04:07,160 --> 01:04:09,120
Speaker 3: course there is no camera, it's just the you know,

1150
01:04:09,200 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 3: the selected viewpoint within the three D space. As the

1151
01:04:11,880 --> 01:04:16,120
Speaker 3: frames are rendered, it feels like that camera almost never

1152
01:04:16,280 --> 01:04:19,520
Speaker 3: stops moving, and in beyond the mind's eye, it's almost

1153
01:04:19,600 --> 01:04:23,680
Speaker 3: constantly in motion. And that motion means we are, without

1154
01:04:23,720 --> 01:04:28,040
Speaker 3: our say so, being just pulled into scenes and images,

1155
01:04:28,120 --> 01:04:31,560
Speaker 3: as with a tractor beam. So the very first animated

1156
01:04:31,560 --> 01:04:34,400
Speaker 3: segment of this movie has the viewer plunging through a

1157
01:04:34,440 --> 01:04:37,840
Speaker 3: tunnel of lights, and you know, remember what the head

1158
01:04:37,880 --> 01:04:40,680
Speaker 3: tells you at the beginning, Actually, it says you are

1159
01:04:40,760 --> 01:04:44,680
Speaker 3: now entering a world inside the essence of your imagination,

1160
01:04:45,240 --> 01:04:49,120
Speaker 3: look within your dreams. They can take you beyond the

1161
01:04:49,160 --> 01:04:52,440
Speaker 3: mind's eye. So I think it's it's not a coincidence

1162
01:04:52,880 --> 01:04:55,680
Speaker 3: that this early CGI showcase would use this kind of

1163
01:04:55,800 --> 01:04:59,840
Speaker 3: language of being literally taken somewhere. By looking, you are

1164
01:04:59,840 --> 01:05:02,040
Speaker 3: a agreeing to be taken somewhere.

1165
01:05:02,840 --> 01:05:05,240
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, enter into the world a dream. I mean

1166
01:05:05,240 --> 01:05:06,960
Speaker 2: that lines up with what I was saying earlier about

1167
01:05:07,680 --> 01:05:13,560
Speaker 2: more recent AI generated images, that they seem like the

1168
01:05:13,560 --> 01:05:15,960
Speaker 2: product of dream. They seem like a dream that you

1169
01:05:16,040 --> 01:05:19,360
Speaker 2: have partially forgotten, and that's part of the appeal of it,

1170
01:05:19,400 --> 01:05:21,640
Speaker 2: And that's I feel like that's definitely the case here

1171
01:05:22,040 --> 01:05:25,880
Speaker 2: in the early nineties with this footage in particular. Also,

1172
01:05:26,000 --> 01:05:28,600
Speaker 2: again it fits with the subject matter. It's not really

1173
01:05:28,680 --> 01:05:32,920
Speaker 2: there's not really a narrative. It's very abstract. The meaning

1174
01:05:33,000 --> 01:05:38,120
Speaker 2: is entirely open to your interpretation for the most part. Yeah,

1175
01:05:37,440 --> 01:05:40,800
Speaker 2: it's it's a trip, as Roger Ebert.

1176
01:05:40,480 --> 01:05:44,840
Speaker 3: Said, Yeah, exactly, And the constant motion of the viewpoint

1177
01:05:44,920 --> 01:05:47,400
Speaker 3: of the perspective or the camera makes it feel like

1178
01:05:47,440 --> 01:05:50,680
Speaker 3: it's literally a trip. You are constantly being sucked into

1179
01:05:50,800 --> 01:05:54,200
Speaker 3: new places and physically made to look at new things

1180
01:05:54,200 --> 01:05:56,439
Speaker 3: as opposed to being where you are and having things

1181
01:05:56,480 --> 01:05:58,880
Speaker 3: happen in front of you. Now, what does that kind

1182
01:05:58,920 --> 01:06:02,040
Speaker 3: of message cash out? I don't know. I feel like

1183
01:06:02,080 --> 01:06:05,600
Speaker 3: it kind of it kind of ties into another line

1184
01:06:05,640 --> 01:06:08,120
Speaker 3: and a song in there, the too Far Take it Easy,

1185
01:06:08,200 --> 01:06:10,880
Speaker 3: It's all right. It's almost like, you know, this new

1186
01:06:10,920 --> 01:06:14,280
Speaker 3: world of technology is going to take you places without

1187
01:06:14,360 --> 01:06:18,280
Speaker 3: asking you. It's it's going to overwhelm you and just

1188
01:06:18,360 --> 01:06:21,280
Speaker 3: take you there. And now you're looking at this and

1189
01:06:21,320 --> 01:06:23,800
Speaker 3: you might not even comprehend or be able to control

1190
01:06:23,920 --> 01:06:27,520
Speaker 3: what it is you're seeing now, But just relax and surrender.

1191
01:06:27,720 --> 01:06:28,480
Speaker 3: It'll be okay.

1192
01:06:30,600 --> 01:06:34,480
Speaker 2: Say yes to the lawnmower Man. Yeah, it weirdly has

1193
01:06:34,520 --> 01:06:38,240
Speaker 2: me wanting to rewatch the lawnmower Man or lawnmower Man Too,

1194
01:06:38,360 --> 01:06:41,280
Speaker 2: Job's War or whatever other title it had.

1195
01:06:41,640 --> 01:06:43,160
Speaker 3: You know, I haven't seen them in a long time.

1196
01:06:43,200 --> 01:06:45,400
Speaker 3: I would want to watch them for the animated scenes,

1197
01:06:45,440 --> 01:06:48,600
Speaker 3: But what I recall is that the human plot and

1198
01:06:48,640 --> 01:06:52,320
Speaker 3: all that is just kind of unpleasant. Yeah, likely, so

1199
01:06:52,720 --> 01:06:57,280
Speaker 3: likely so, but who knows, It's been a while. Nobody

1200
01:06:57,320 --> 01:06:59,720
Speaker 3: eats yard clippings though, like that was the crew One

1201
01:06:59,720 --> 01:07:02,440
Speaker 3: of the crew things about the original king store. Well,

1202
01:07:02,480 --> 01:07:05,240
Speaker 3: if the animator merges your form into that of a sheep,

1203
01:07:05,280 --> 01:07:08,560
Speaker 3: you might you know, this is liable to happen to

1204
01:07:08,560 --> 01:07:10,680
Speaker 3: all of us because our again, our forms are not

1205
01:07:10,840 --> 01:07:14,320
Speaker 3: fixed where we can morphit any moment. Oh, and that

1206
01:07:14,400 --> 01:07:16,600
Speaker 3: sort of ties into just one last thing I wanted

1207
01:07:16,600 --> 01:07:20,800
Speaker 3: to mention. I thought was interesting about trends in early CGI.

1208
01:07:21,640 --> 01:07:25,400
Speaker 3: Did you also notice a visual theme that things are

1209
01:07:25,480 --> 01:07:29,000
Speaker 3: the same at every scale, That there's like all this

1210
01:07:29,240 --> 01:07:32,920
Speaker 3: zooming in and out and going out into space and

1211
01:07:32,960 --> 01:07:36,040
Speaker 3: seeing planets and stars and quasars and galaxies and all that,

1212
01:07:36,080 --> 01:07:39,280
Speaker 3: and then you zoom in and see microscopic mechanisms and

1213
01:07:39,360 --> 01:07:43,280
Speaker 3: cells in a bloodstream, and circuit boards, circuit boards represented

1214
01:07:43,320 --> 01:07:47,160
Speaker 3: as cities with skyscrapers and stuff, And so there's this.

1215
01:07:47,880 --> 01:07:51,240
Speaker 3: It seemed to me there's this repeated theme throughout a

1216
01:07:51,240 --> 01:07:53,880
Speaker 3: lot of early CGI, and it's here in this movie too,

1217
01:07:54,200 --> 01:07:58,280
Speaker 3: of a kind of scale agnosticism, that what exists at

1218
01:07:58,320 --> 01:08:02,520
Speaker 3: one level of resolution and is reproduced at greater levels

1219
01:08:02,520 --> 01:08:04,560
Speaker 3: of resolution. So the more you zoom in or the

1220
01:08:04,560 --> 01:08:07,920
Speaker 3: more you zoom out, you just keep seeing the same patterns.

1221
01:08:08,600 --> 01:08:11,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, as we inevitably like

1222
01:08:11,960 --> 01:08:16,879
Speaker 2: zoom in and out of these imagined micro and macro worlds.

1223
01:08:17,200 --> 01:08:19,360
Speaker 3: The message of that is you got to put computers

1224
01:08:19,360 --> 01:08:21,560
Speaker 3: inside your body. It's time to be a cyborg.

1225
01:08:22,760 --> 01:08:24,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess. I mean that's part of the that's

1226
01:08:24,960 --> 01:08:26,840
Speaker 2: kind of wrapped up in the optimism too, like we'll

1227
01:08:26,880 --> 01:08:33,480
Speaker 2: become machines, will become this synthesis of biology and technology,

1228
01:08:33,520 --> 01:08:37,680
Speaker 2: and it's just gonna make everything smoother and cooler and shinier.

1229
01:08:38,160 --> 01:08:40,519
Speaker 3: I can't wait to be t one thousand coup.

1230
01:08:41,000 --> 01:08:45,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything is crow all right. Well, there you have

1231
01:08:45,200 --> 01:08:48,280
Speaker 2: it beyond the mind's eye. I don't know if I'm

1232
01:08:48,320 --> 01:08:52,600
Speaker 2: gonna keep exploring the other films in this franchise. It

1233
01:08:52,640 --> 01:08:55,800
Speaker 2: seems like somebody should put out a big, thick blu

1234
01:08:55,880 --> 01:08:58,200
Speaker 2: ray set like of all of them. Surely that's in

1235
01:08:58,240 --> 01:08:58,719
Speaker 2: the works.

1236
01:08:59,080 --> 01:09:01,280
Speaker 3: Why has nobody done that? Yeah? Absolutely.

1237
01:09:01,840 --> 01:09:04,479
Speaker 2: I read that some of the extras on one of

1238
01:09:04,680 --> 01:09:07,920
Speaker 2: the physical releases of this included a sequence where we

1239
01:09:08,040 --> 01:09:11,120
Speaker 2: get to see a young Hummer band in which all

1240
01:09:11,160 --> 01:09:15,240
Speaker 2: four members of the band are Yon Hummer. So there

1241
01:09:15,240 --> 01:09:16,960
Speaker 2: are some extras like that I'd like to see as well.

1242
01:09:16,960 --> 01:09:17,600
Speaker 2: I couldn't find a.

1243
01:09:17,560 --> 01:09:19,520
Speaker 3: Stream of that anywhere that's beautiful.

1244
01:09:19,920 --> 01:09:23,360
Speaker 2: All right. As of publication time, we have not yet

1245
01:09:23,400 --> 01:09:25,360
Speaker 2: heard back from the director. If we do hear back

1246
01:09:25,360 --> 01:09:28,599
Speaker 2: from the director, please tune in to the next listener

1247
01:09:28,640 --> 01:09:33,960
Speaker 2: Mail episode and we will share his answers to our questions.

1248
01:09:34,640 --> 01:09:36,200
Speaker 2: All Right, we're gonna go ahead and close out this

1249
01:09:36,240 --> 01:09:39,360
Speaker 2: episode of Weird House Cinema. This one's been fine. We'd

1250
01:09:39,400 --> 01:09:42,160
Speaker 2: love to hear from everyone out there. Were you too

1251
01:09:42,360 --> 01:09:46,760
Speaker 2: a child of the nineties? Do you remember the commercials

1252
01:09:46,760 --> 01:09:50,479
Speaker 2: for this on TV or in print? Did you rent

1253
01:09:50,880 --> 01:09:54,360
Speaker 2: or purchase Beyond the Mind's Eye? And how much did

1254
01:09:54,360 --> 01:09:57,360
Speaker 2: it blow your mind? We want to hear your thoughts

1255
01:09:57,400 --> 01:09:59,320
Speaker 2: on it, and what has it been like to revisit it?

1256
01:10:00,600 --> 01:10:02,600
Speaker 2: What are your what are your thoughts on some of

1257
01:10:02,840 --> 01:10:06,559
Speaker 2: our various ideas that we presented in this episode. Let's

1258
01:10:06,600 --> 01:10:08,960
Speaker 2: see if you uh. We'll just remind you here that

1259
01:10:09,280 --> 01:10:12,840
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. These are Friday in the Stuff to

1260
01:10:12,840 --> 01:10:15,200
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a science and

1261
01:10:15,240 --> 01:10:18,439
Speaker 2: culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but

1262
01:10:18,680 --> 01:10:21,000
Speaker 2: on Fridays we set all that aside for the time being.

1263
01:10:21,360 --> 01:10:22,840
Speaker 2: If you want to see a complete list of all

1264
01:10:22,840 --> 01:10:25,080
Speaker 2: the films we've covered on Weird House Cinema over the years.

1265
01:10:25,080 --> 01:10:26,920
Speaker 2: Go to letterbox dot com. It's L E T T

1266
01:10:27,000 --> 01:10:29,839
Speaker 2: E R B O x D dot com. Our profile

1267
01:10:30,040 --> 01:10:33,040
Speaker 2: is weird House and you will find the list. Sometimes

1268
01:10:33,120 --> 01:10:36,400
Speaker 2: there'll be a sneak peek ahead at what's coming out

1269
01:10:36,640 --> 01:10:37,639
Speaker 2: the following week.

1270
01:10:38,200 --> 01:10:41,840
Speaker 3: Huge Things, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.

1271
01:10:42,240 --> 01:10:43,880
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1272
01:10:43,920 --> 01:10:46,519
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1273
01:10:46,560 --> 01:10:48,679
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1274
01:10:48,880 --> 01:10:51,479
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1275
01:10:51,479 --> 01:10:58,960
Speaker 3: Your Mind dot com.

1276
01:10:59,120 --> 01:11:01,640
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind and is production of iHeartRadio.

1277
01:11:02,000 --> 01:11:06,000
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1278
01:11:06,080 --> 01:11:07,839
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.