Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House
Speaker 3: Cinema we're doing something a little bit different. Most of
Speaker 3: the time we focus on narrative feature films, at least
Speaker 3: within the weird genres. But today we are not looking
Speaker 3: at a narrative feature film. We're going to be talking
Speaker 3: about an anthology format art film from nineteen ninety two
Speaker 3: called Beyond the Mind's Eye, which was the second part
Speaker 3: in a series of similar films beginning in the year
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety with The Mind's Eye, a computer animation odyssey. Now,
Speaker 3: as the name implies, the Mind's Eye films were showcases
Speaker 3: computer animation, showcases for sort of the cutting edge of
Speaker 3: computer based animation techniques of the day, and the typical
Speaker 3: format of all these films in the Mind's Eye series
Speaker 3: would be a sequence of musical numbers usually I think,
Speaker 3: just by a single artist throughout, accompanied by strange computer
Speaker 3: generated imagery scenes and imagery. Now, Rob, I don't know
Speaker 3: if you were able to get more clarity on the
Speaker 3: source of all of these animated segments. One thing that's
Speaker 3: clear is that a lot of the segments were created
Speaker 3: for other projects originally, things like TV commercials, sci fi movies,
Speaker 3: video games, demo reels, just industry stuff and so forth,
Speaker 3: and then a lot of that was edited together and
Speaker 3: set to music for these projects. But I don't know
Speaker 3: if that's the case with all of the animation or
Speaker 3: just some of it. It's possible some segments were created
Speaker 3: specifically for the mind S Eye movies, but I couldn't
Speaker 3: get a clear answer on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those situations where the movie
Speaker 2: database listings for this title, beyond the mind side that
Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about here today, seem kind
Speaker 2: of limited. Now, I will add that the actual credits
Speaker 2: for the feature itself. I mean, those credits do provide
Speaker 2: a lot of names and a lot more of additional info.
Speaker 2: But I feel like to really cite everything and to
Speaker 2: source and to point to the source of everything that
Speaker 2: we see in the picture, you're dealing with like a
Speaker 2: true sort of multi media archaeology, sort of an exercise
Speaker 2: that we're we were not really all about here with
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. So we're going to call out some
Speaker 2: of the people that were involved, but we can't possibly
Speaker 2: list everyone because again this is an anthology all these
Speaker 2: different films, films that, especially for the time period, often
Speaker 2: involved like multiple folks bringing it together from a technological
Speaker 2: in ar two stick standpoint.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So I wonder I bet a lot
Speaker 3: of you out there listening remember The Mind's Eye if
Speaker 3: you were around and watching TV, reading, reading Wired magazine
Speaker 3: in the early nineties or something. The Mind's Eye films
Speaker 3: were apparently extremely popular on home video. I never rented
Speaker 3: one when I was a kid, but I've had friends
Speaker 3: mentioned them before, like, oh, remember the Mind's Eye, Like
Speaker 3: you know, I'm I'm maybe somebody said they rented it
Speaker 3: from Blockbuster or something. But anyway, they were very popular
Speaker 3: on home video, initially on VHS and on laser disc
Speaker 3: and then later on DVD, and I can only imagine
Speaker 3: the number of hangouts cool hangouts in the early nineties
Speaker 3: that began, like dude, you've got to come over and
Speaker 3: watch this tape I rented. It's so trippy. And so
Speaker 3: that's the series. But again, the specific film that we're
Speaker 3: going to be talking about today is the second movie
Speaker 3: in the Mind's I series, called Beyond The Mind's I
Speaker 3: from nineteen ninety two, directed by Michael Boydston and featuring
Speaker 3: music by Yan Hamer, who I know on the podcast before,
Speaker 3: I've probably called Jan Hammer, but it's Jon Hamer. I
Speaker 3: found out by listening to an interview. So when I
Speaker 3: got the idea to do one of these one of
Speaker 3: the Mind's Eye movies for the show, I was browsing
Speaker 3: through a list of them and I saw one was
Speaker 3: by one Head, music by Yon Hamer, and I knew
Speaker 3: we had to pick the hammer fest. It had to
Speaker 3: be that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Listeners to Weird House Cinema will remember that
Speaker 2: Jon Hammer scored the film I Come In Peace aka
Speaker 2: Dark Angel that we previously talked about on the show,
Speaker 2: and most famously, of course, did the soundtrack for Miami Vice,
Speaker 2: including that absurdly great track Crockets theme. But anyway, we'll
Speaker 2: come back to jon 'hammer in a bit and we'll
Speaker 2: talk about him a lot, because basically this is a
Speaker 2: film where his music is his front and center. Really,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the visuals and then the music of
Speaker 2: Yon Hamer, and that what beyond the Mind's Eye consists.
Speaker 3: Of, Yeah, now, whatever is going through your head right now?
Speaker 3: Out there listening in the year twenty twenty four. Whatever
Speaker 3: you are thinking about the idea of a combination art
Speaker 3: house showcase and industrial demo reel entirely made out of
Speaker 3: CGI from the early nineties, you do need to probably
Speaker 3: shift your thinking a little bit, like, especially if you
Speaker 3: weren't around at the time and don't like you can't
Speaker 3: tap into that mindset again, because people in the nineties
Speaker 3: were absolutely losing their minds about how astounding, futuristic and
Speaker 3: even beautiful all this stuff was, which is kind of
Speaker 3: hard to reconcile with the way it looks now, not
Speaker 3: that it looks not that I'm insulting the way it
Speaker 3: looks now, but it's just it was a different time,
Speaker 3: and it's hard to get fully back into that brain space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's it's very much a snapshot of
Speaker 2: the time. I mean, this is a nineteen ninety two release.
Speaker 2: This is hutting edge computer generated imagery from the early nineties,
Speaker 2: the very early nineties. And you know, I honestly can't
Speaker 2: remember if I ever rented this from a video store.
Speaker 2: It's very possible that I did, but I mostly just
Speaker 2: remember seeing the commercials for it, because there were a
Speaker 2: lot of TV commercials for it. As I remember, I'm
Speaker 2: guessing I was watching, you know, it's probably MTV, maybe
Speaker 2: the Sci Fi Channel as well, though honestly, I can't
Speaker 2: remember offhand when that started out. I think it may
Speaker 2: have started in ninety two, so maybe not Sci Fi Channel,
Speaker 2: But I feel like MTV at least was prime, prime
Speaker 2: target area for these commercials. And it really did feel exciting.
Speaker 2: It felt like a revelation. This is the future. This
Speaker 2: is what computer generated imagery can do for us, this
Speaker 2: is what video games can do for us, because our
Speaker 2: video games were not like this, not yet, but it
Speaker 2: was the promise that they could be. And in general,
Speaker 2: it's like, this is the future, and and you had
Speaker 2: every reason to be excited. And honestly, I was looking
Speaker 2: back on I was thinking about the fact that, well,
Speaker 2: of course I was a child at the time. I
Speaker 2: was a kid, so of course I was excited. You know.
Speaker 2: Did adults feel the same way, Well, obviously they did,
Speaker 2: because on one hand, these videos were highly successful. They were,
Speaker 2: you know, on the best sellers lists and all. And
Speaker 2: I looked around and I found that Roger Ebert was
Speaker 2: a big fan. On the Cisco and Ebert Show, there's
Speaker 2: a particular episode I was able to. You can look
Speaker 2: it up on the archives and find the full episode.
Speaker 2: It's the one where they they review Lorenzo's Oil and
Speaker 2: Chaplain and some other you know, kind of stuffy and
Speaker 2: certainly non non futuristic movie. But at the end of it,
Speaker 2: we have Roger Ebert's video pick of the Week and
Speaker 2: it is Beyond the Mind's Eye, and he loves it.
Speaker 2: He says, quote, one day computers will be able to
Speaker 2: create entire movies, and the visual possibilities are breadth. To
Speaker 2: look at where this shot takes us, and they cut
Speaker 2: to one of the you know, the otherworldly vistas that
Speaker 2: Beyond the Mind's Eye gives us, and he closes up
Speaker 2: as saying, it's quite a trip.
Speaker 3: One day computers will animate entire movies.
Speaker 2: And they would like Yeah. In nineteen ninety five, that's
Speaker 2: when we got Toy Story from Pixar, the first fully
Speaker 2: CGI full length motion pictures, So yeah, it was just
Speaker 2: about to happen basically, like they were already in production
Speaker 2: on Toys. I think the descript for Toy Story was
Speaker 2: kind of like finalized in ninety three, so like really
Speaker 2: it was about to happen. So I feel like Ebert
Speaker 2: was correct on all part, on all accounts here, this
Speaker 2: is essentially what we're going to see, and we have
Speaker 2: seen the perfection to some extent. I think of CGI
Speaker 2: animated films and the Pixar Disney DreamWorks mold, though of
Speaker 2: course it's worth pointing out that things like photorealistic CGI
Speaker 2: has a lot more to contend with. You know, there's
Speaker 2: a more uncanny valley to traverse in that realm, and
Speaker 2: so I don't know if we've seen anything that truly
Speaker 2: succeeds in that category.
Speaker 3: Now, if you go back and read what people were
Speaker 3: saying about these movies at the time, one very common
Speaker 3: theme is that the Mindseye films are regarded as trippy
Speaker 3: or psychedelic. Now, that might not seem all that strange
Speaker 3: for a computer animated music video film, but that's not
Speaker 3: necessarily said about all animated films, or even all art films. So, like,
Speaker 3: what is it about this CGI package film idea that
Speaker 3: specifically lends itself to descriptions having to do with with
Speaker 3: visionary experiences or psychedelic drugs. I was thinking about this,
Speaker 3: and this is a theme I'll come back to multiple
Speaker 3: times in the episode I've been thinking a lot about
Speaker 3: linking techniques in the like just practical techniques of computer animation,
Speaker 3: to the effect that the film has on us, and
Speaker 3: I was wondering if the trippiness has something to do
Speaker 3: with the with the particular capabilities of computer animation at
Speaker 3: the time that by algorithmically changing dimension values across time
Speaker 3: for like a shape or an image on the screen,
Speaker 3: you can create these shifting morphing forms which are all
Speaker 3: throughout the animated segments in beyond the mind's eye. I
Speaker 3: would say every single one of them has an image,
Speaker 3: like a shape or an object that morphs into something else,
Speaker 3: and these changes from one thing to another very much
Speaker 3: mirror the form shifting visual effects that people commonly experience
Speaker 3: on some psychedelic compounds. So I wonder if that's one
Speaker 3: part of it, that particular capability of computer animation and
Speaker 3: its similarity to psychedelic visual effects. Of course, having one
Speaker 3: shape morph into another is something you can do in
Speaker 3: traditional hand drawn animation as well, but you see it
Speaker 3: a lot in early CGI, and I wonder if it's
Speaker 3: because it was like easier to automate by some kind
Speaker 3: of stepwise manipulation or algorithm of just the number variables
Speaker 3: that you use to create the dimensions of an image.
Speaker 3: Another characteristic that I wonder if people were picking up
Speaker 3: on in describing this movie as psychedelic or trippy, is
Speaker 3: just that the imagery looks super, super weird in a
Speaker 3: way that nobody would have been familiar with before CGI.
Speaker 3: And again this would have to do with the practical
Speaker 3: state of the industry, Like it was impossible to code
Speaker 3: a realistic looking human face with computer animation at this time,
Speaker 3: so realism is off the table. But you also could
Speaker 3: not easily reproduce familiar hand drawn art styles that had
Speaker 3: been around for years in traditional animation, So you would,
Speaker 3: by necessity, be establishing a whole new visual language for
Speaker 3: representing forms from the real world, especially like animals and
Speaker 3: plants humans, And so by necessity they look the way
Speaker 3: they're rendered is very unfamiliar to us. It doesn't look
Speaker 3: either like reality or like any art we're familiar with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one thing that becomes obvious as you watch Beyond
Speaker 2: the Mind's Eye is that a convincing reproduction of the
Speaker 2: human body was not really achievable at this point, but
Speaker 2: we still tried, because that's that's that's human art. We
Speaker 2: always try to capture our own form in the forms
Speaker 2: of animals in our vicinity, and yeah, they don't quite
Speaker 2: hit the mark. But in not hitting the mark completely,
Speaker 2: there is this it's close enough, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 2: you know, we're we're vain pattern seeking creatures. So if
Speaker 2: you get close enough to a human form, we'll identify
Speaker 2: with it and we'll work with it. Right, So it's still,
Speaker 2: you know, engrossing, even if some of the characters are
Speaker 2: still a bit on the grotesque side.
Speaker 3: Of things, which is the segment that has a human
Speaker 3: figure but it just has leopard print flesh.
Speaker 2: We we'll have to maybybe that'll come to me as
Speaker 2: we get into the blow by blow plot of this movie.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, you have things like like that that occur,
Speaker 2: and yeah, you can still you can still connect with them,
Speaker 2: you know. I was reminded in all of this, like
Speaker 2: trying to think about like how it felt to see
Speaker 2: these things, how it felt to see these kind of representations,
Speaker 2: even if they, you know, were very by today's standards,
Speaker 2: like crude representations of of like a human body or
Speaker 2: an animal and whatnot. I'm reminded a little bit of
Speaker 2: some of the these the AI generated images that we've
Speaker 2: seen more of them. I'm thinking more of the things
Speaker 2: that were really hitting maybe a year or two ago,
Speaker 2: you know, during the era where it's like that you
Speaker 2: could definitely look at the fingers and count the fingers
Speaker 2: to see if something was was computer generated or not
Speaker 2: AI generated or not. And I think one of the
Speaker 2: things about those images is that, like the images we're
Speaker 2: seeing and beyond the mind's eyes when they first hit,
Speaker 2: they are not achieving like photorealism, they're not completely convincing.
Speaker 2: You see them and you know something is off, but
Speaker 2: also in it being off, it's something that you haven't
Speaker 2: quite seen before, you're like, because I remember the first
Speaker 2: time I saw some of those AI generated images, I
Speaker 2: was like, who is this artist? Like it's clearly the
Speaker 2: same person because they all kind of look the same,
Speaker 2: but it's a little different than anything I've seen before,
Speaker 2: and that makes it enthralling. Then then you get bored
Speaker 2: with it and you move on. But the technology moves
Speaker 2: on as well. The technology advances and it's no longer
Speaker 2: capable or it's no longer creating things like it was before,
Speaker 2: but the mood is still.
Speaker 3: There, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, Now in terms of your point about like
Speaker 2: psychedelia and the imagery that we see and beyond the
Speaker 2: mind's eye. It is interesting to think about how there's
Speaker 2: probably a number of nexus points between like various counterculture
Speaker 2: movements and folks as well as some of the individuals
Speaker 2: who are like pushing these developments. You know, I'm thinking
Speaker 2: of you know, sort of Silicon Valley types, that convergence
Speaker 2: of programming and art, like those worlds are probably you know,
Speaker 2: inevitably bumping up against each other.
Speaker 3: Here. You can just feel the techno hippie culture dripping
Speaker 3: off of this. It's very it's a very West Coast product.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah. And at the same time, like think about it,
Speaker 2: It's ninety two. A new millennium is coming, and it's
Speaker 2: coming fast, and so there are a lot of ideas
Speaker 2: about like what is going to happen, How are we
Speaker 2: transforming for this new millennium, How is technology going to
Speaker 2: change us? How can we elevate ourselves through it? So
Speaker 2: there's a you know, there's always a certain amount of anxiety, obviously,
Speaker 2: but there is also a certain amount of technological optimism
Speaker 2: that's very strong, especially in beyond the Mind's eye.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's quite literally promising to take you to
Speaker 3: new realms. There is even today, looking back on it now,
Speaker 3: a genuinely infectious sense of exploration and enthusiasm for the
Speaker 3: new and the weird in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, you can also see
Speaker 2: other examples of this, you know, sort of like trance
Speaker 2: music culture taking up various sort of futurism ideas, you know,
Speaker 2: thinking about the blending of say, you know, trance music
Speaker 2: and the writings of Terence mckinna and so forth. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I feel like Beyond the Mind's Eye seems to set
Speaker 2: right alongside that. And also the title is just so perfect.
Speaker 2: I'm always a little bit shocked to realize that it's
Speaker 2: called Beyond the Mind's Eye because it's the second in
Speaker 2: a series and the first was just the Mind's Eye.
Speaker 2: Because Beyond the Mind's Eye is perfect because there is
Speaker 2: this sense that like it is promising to show you
Speaker 2: things that you cannot imagine yet like it takes this
Speaker 2: technological evolution in order for us to even conceive of
Speaker 2: these ideas, you know, like that's that's how this hit,
Speaker 2: that's how this felt back in the nineties.
Speaker 3: Well, as Professor Brian Oblivion taught us the television screen
Speaker 3: is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, it is
Speaker 3: part of the physical structure of the brain. And so
Speaker 3: by showing you this movie, they are offering you a
Speaker 3: brain upgrade. That's what it feels like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so hopefully we'll be able to hold on
Speaker 2: to that as we continue discussing this film, because on
Speaker 2: one level, we do have to look at it as
Speaker 2: a thing that doesn't hit the same anymore, that is
Speaker 2: going to feel more uncanny than it did, that is
Speaker 2: going to feel rougher around the edges than it did
Speaker 2: back in the day. But at the same time, I
Speaker 2: just want to be clear that nobody can discount how
Speaker 2: impressive this felt back in the early nineties, and it
Speaker 2: is a snapshot of cutting edge technological artistic achievement of
Speaker 2: that time period.
Speaker 3: Well, despite the tremendous advancements in what's possible with computer
Speaker 3: animation since then. I would kind of have a hard
Speaker 3: time imagining someone could watch this and not sort of
Speaker 3: love it. Now, Yeah, yeah, what what is there to
Speaker 3: not like about Beyond the Mind's Eye?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's gonna I think. On one hand, the music,
Speaker 2: of course still stands there. Jon Hammer's music is tremendous
Speaker 2: and so that's going to pull you in and if
Speaker 2: nothing else, it's going to relax you. The images are
Speaker 2: going to relax you. There's nothing here that can hurt you.
Speaker 2: This movie is like a nice, warm hug. It spoons
Speaker 2: you for its runtime of what an hour and some change,
Speaker 2: and yeah, you can you can giggle a little bit
Speaker 2: at how some of the effects hold up today, but
Speaker 2: it's it's still it's still impressive, all right now. Sadly,
Speaker 2: I could not find a rip of the TV spot
Speaker 2: for Beyond the Mind's Eye, either to include or just
Speaker 2: to re experience it, because I know I must have
Speaker 2: seen this commercial hundreds of times back in the day,
Speaker 2: but as far as I could tell, nobody has ripped
Speaker 2: it in upload. So that's a shame.
Speaker 3: I went looking for that as well and could not
Speaker 3: find it.
Speaker 2: Now. Fortunately you can find the film itself. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of streaming options for it out on the web,
Speaker 2: and you can still buy it on DVD. That's assuming
Speaker 2: you don't want to go retro and get yourself a
Speaker 2: VHS or a laser disc.
Speaker 3: I know we've talked about this before, but when are
Speaker 3: laser discs going to come back in the same way
Speaker 3: Vinyl has. It just feels right, doesn't it, that we'd
Speaker 3: go back.
Speaker 2: To laser It seems like there would be There probably
Speaker 2: are a laser disc enthusiasts out there. I know for
Speaker 2: a while they held on because there were still certain
Speaker 2: films and there. This may still be the case where
Speaker 2: there had not been a release superior to the laser
Speaker 2: disc release, So I'm not sure. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 2: briefly talk about some of the folks involved here. This
Speaker 2: is going to be a little different than usual because
Speaker 2: we have no human cast, but we do have there
Speaker 2: are We're ultimately a lot of humans involved in this.
Speaker 2: We're not going to highlight all of them. But credited
Speaker 2: as the director and as an editor on this film
Speaker 2: is Michael Boydstone. The same year, he had also worked
Speaker 2: with musician Pete Bardens I believe of Camel Fame on
Speaker 2: a project called Watercolors. I wasn't able to find streaming
Speaker 2: content of this, but it apparently combined footage of running
Speaker 2: water from Yellowstone with Pete Barden's music. Boydston would go
Speaker 2: on to work with Thomas Dolby on nineteen ninety four's
Speaker 2: The Gate to the Mind's Eye, which he also directed.
Speaker 2: And he also worked on a project called Televoid in
Speaker 2: ninety seven, which I'm not saying. I think it's an
Speaker 2: unrelated project that does similar things like using different different
Speaker 2: computer animated shorts and sort of stitching them together into
Speaker 2: a cohesive full picture.
Speaker 3: Did Boydston work on the Mindseie movie that had Kansas
Speaker 3: music by Kansas?
Speaker 2: I don't think he did have to. You know, there
Speaker 2: are different people involved in these Different people did the music,
Speaker 2: like Thomas Dolby again was on the Gate to the
Speaker 2: Mind's Eye, but he Boydsten went on to work on
Speaker 2: a number of educational programs, including at least one episode
Speaker 2: of Bill and I The Science Guy, as well as
Speaker 2: a series called Diz Kids, and he served as cinematographer
Speaker 2: on various TV and film projects, including the twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: film Beta Test starring Manu Bennett. And I wasn't able
Speaker 2: to find much else about like his role in this
Speaker 2: production and how it went down. So I was looking
Speaker 2: around and I found his contact information. I reached out
Speaker 2: to him and I was like, hey, can we ask
Speaker 2: you a few questions about Beyond the Mind's Eye? And
Speaker 2: he said, he said, sure, you know it feels like
Speaker 2: several lifetimes ago, but I'd be up for that, so
Speaker 2: we sent him some questions. As of this recording time,
Speaker 2: we have not heard back from him, but if we
Speaker 2: hear back from him before publication, we'll tack it on
Speaker 2: at the end of this episode, and if he gets
Speaker 2: back to us after the episode is published, well, then
Speaker 2: we'll include it in a future listener mail segment. I
Speaker 2: can't wait to know more, all right, we already mentioned
Speaker 2: Jon Hamer born nineteen forty eight check American musician, composer,
Speaker 2: and record producer again, best known for his tracks Miami
Speaker 2: Vice Theme and Crockett's Theme, both from the nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: series Miamivice Again. Crockett's theme especially is just incredible. That's
Speaker 2: when you just need a You've probably heard it before,
Speaker 2: but if you haven't, go listen to it. Tremendous track.
Speaker 2: He won two Grammy Awards for the Miami Vice Theme song.
Speaker 2: His other scores include two episodes of Tales from the Crypt,
Speaker 2: night Rider two thousand, nineteen ninety six is Beastmester three,
Speaker 2: The I of Bracus, and of course that nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: Dolph Lugrean film I Come In Piece aka Dark Angel,
Speaker 2: which we previously discussed on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Before recording this episode, we were both watching a news
Speaker 3: segment where Jan Hamer was being interviewed primarily about his
Speaker 3: work on Beyond the Mind's Eye. Before for the interview began,
Speaker 3: there was just the sickest ever clip of him absolutely
Speaker 3: shredding a strap on keyboard what you might be tempted
Speaker 3: to call a key tar, but I don't know if
Speaker 3: he called it a key tar.
Speaker 2: I've seen it referred to as a signature model link
Speaker 2: keyboard and maybe our synth junkies can chime in more
Speaker 2: on that, but I've read that, like one of the
Speaker 2: things about him is the Yeah, he's very much a
Speaker 2: keyboard synth guy, and he developed in augmented a way
Speaker 2: so that he could jam out on a keyboard like
Speaker 2: it was a guitar, like with the energy of rocking
Speaker 2: out to a guitar, and as someone who cannot rock
Speaker 2: out on a keyboard or a guitar, I can't really
Speaker 2: speak to the differences there. Joe, you have guitar experience,
Speaker 2: maybe you can tell us what that might entail.
Speaker 3: Oh well, I mean performing with a guitar can be
Speaker 3: a kind of fun sort of semi athletic thing because
Speaker 3: you're standing up. You can run around with it, and
Speaker 3: you can sort of dance while you're playing it. Yes,
Speaker 3: you can sort of dance while playing a keyboard. I
Speaker 3: have less experience there because I can barely play the keyboard,
Speaker 3: so I don't I don't know. Yeah, you can't run
Speaker 3: around with keyboard unless you turn it into a strap
Speaker 3: on keyboard, like like this thing that I'm tempted to
Speaker 3: call a guitar.
Speaker 2: I guess, like thinking of clips, I've seen of spirited
Speaker 2: guitar players and spirited keyboard players, because there are some
Speaker 2: very spirited keyboard players, you know. I mean there's a
Speaker 2: different type of rocking out that it can occur. I
Speaker 2: guess you can if you're like really rocking out on
Speaker 2: the on the synth or the keyboard, like you're still
Speaker 2: localized to that machine. You can't like run the stage
Speaker 2: or anything, so.
Speaker 3: Right, you can kind of headbang, I guess while you're playing,
Speaker 3: but yeah, your feet need to stay roughly where they
Speaker 3: are now.
Speaker 2: Johanhamer's music is widely available on music streaming platforms, and
Speaker 2: that includes Beyond the Mind's Eye as an album. You
Speaker 2: can listen to it on you know, Apple Music, Spotify,
Speaker 2: wherever you get your digital music. He has a lot
Speaker 2: of other track I was going through some of his
Speaker 2: other album and taking him in. There's a nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: five album of his title The First Seven Days, and
Speaker 2: there's a track on there titled Light Slash Sun, and
Speaker 2: I thought it was very good, all right. The producer
Speaker 2: of Beyond the Mind's Eye was Stephen Churchill born nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty seven. He produced, I believe all of the Mind's
Speaker 2: Eye videos, beginning with nineteen nineties The Mind's Eye, followed
Speaker 2: by this film, and then ninety four is The Gate
Speaker 2: to the Mind's Eye, ninety six is Odyssey into the
Speaker 2: Mind's Eye, ninety seven's Computer Animation Showcase, nineteen ninety eight's
Speaker 2: Ancient Alien, and nineteen ninety eight's Computer Animation Celebration. I
Speaker 2: don't know why the the title breakdowns seems too much.
Speaker 2: At this point, we're no longer talking about the Mind's Eye.
Speaker 2: He previously worked as an animator on Disney's The Black
Speaker 2: Cauldron in nineteen eighty five. He was a character designer
Speaker 2: on The Great Mouse Detective in eighty six, a background
Speaker 2: artist on Oliver and Company in eighty eight and an
Speaker 2: in between artist on The Little Mermaid in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 3: I remember the Great Mate. He was a character designer.
Speaker 3: The Great Mouse Detective had some extremely scary characters when
Speaker 3: I was little, at least I remember I rented that one,
Speaker 3: and there's this bat with sharp teeth on it that
Speaker 3: freaked me out. Also, it has a rat villain voiced
Speaker 3: by Vincent Price, I think, who gets very scary at
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that is definitely a Vincent Price role,
Speaker 2: and he is quite good. I'm trying to remember who
Speaker 2: voiced the bat. Nobody ever heard of Candy Candido, not
Speaker 2: a I believe he was a radio performer and voice actor,
Speaker 2: but I don't have a lot of familiarity with his work.
Speaker 3: Well, the two villainous rodents in this movie were They
Speaker 3: both freaked me out when I was young, So so
Speaker 3: maybe he designed them.
Speaker 2: And then ne was Sherlock Holmes in that?
Speaker 3: Oh really?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Oh wait, but Sherlock Holmes is just like the human
Speaker 3: who happens to live in the room above the basle
Speaker 3: The Great Mouse Detective.
Speaker 2: I think you're right. It's been a long time since
Speaker 2: I've seen it.
Speaker 3: Like it's not primarily an adventure about Sherlock Holmes. It
Speaker 3: is about his mouse equivalent, Basel though whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Black Cauldron is when I've been tempted to revisit,
Speaker 2: but I have not yet gotten around to it. It's
Speaker 2: got some great dark fantasy elements to it, but it's
Speaker 2: not one that I think was well regarded at the
Speaker 2: time of its release, and I don't know if people
Speaker 2: have warmed up to it or not now. Obviously, this
Speaker 2: project encompasses the computer effects work of various individuals, and
Speaker 2: again we're not going to be able to have time
Speaker 2: to really do justice to everyone, but we'll reference some
Speaker 2: of them as they come up. I know that in
Speaker 2: the movie databases, the Flora section is credited to yo
Speaker 2: Chiro Kawaguchi, and Journey to the Fourth Dimension is credited
Speaker 2: to Rick Harper and David Thornton. But of course, is
Speaker 2: that that's just some of the people involved in this,
Speaker 2: and there are many others.
Speaker 3: Now, as we said earlier, the movie is sort of
Speaker 3: you could kind of think of it as like just
Speaker 3: a series of music videos. So that's a little misleading
Speaker 3: because they're they do kind of have an narrative flow
Speaker 3: in a way, but they are a it's a series
Speaker 3: of discrete musical numbers on the soundtrack that are each
Speaker 3: paired with an animation sequence that maybe sort of one
Speaker 3: continuous theme throughout, or might just be just a Shmorgus
Speaker 3: board of imagery.
Speaker 2: That's right. And you know, the interesting thing is, like
Speaker 2: any anthology, we kind of have a host. Yeah, we
Speaker 2: have we have something or someone that is going to
Speaker 2: introduce us to the concept of beyond the mind's eye.
Speaker 3: We get a floating virtual bald head with these you know,
Speaker 3: polygons on its surface. It almost looks I don't know
Speaker 3: if you caught the same thing. Maybe I'm out of
Speaker 3: my mind here, but it looks almost kind of like
Speaker 3: a floating Jeff Bezos head.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, there's a little bit of Bezos to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I think that's a strong comparison.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the bezos head tells us you are now entering
Speaker 3: a world inside the essence of your imagination, look within
Speaker 3: your dreammes. They can take you beyond the mind's eye.
Speaker 3: And then we begin to zoom. We begin to zoom
Speaker 3: through just a tunnel of textures and colors and things
Speaker 3: start to pop out at us. And it is a
Speaker 3: fairly overwhelming experience. At first, you're just like plunging down
Speaker 3: this tunnel into darkness with colors emerging from out of everywhere,
Speaker 3: and you don't even know what you're looking at, and
Speaker 3: you can't quite make sense of it. And by the
Speaker 3: time you sort of focus on one shape and image,
Speaker 3: it's turning into something else. And I can see why
Speaker 3: they put this animated segment first, because even in retrospect,
Speaker 3: it kind of takes your breath away, and I'm sure
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety two you'd just be like, Wow, I
Speaker 3: can't even begin to describe what I'm looking at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because especially if you're watching this on VHS, you
Speaker 2: can't just skip to the next chapter. You'd have to
Speaker 2: fast forward through stuff, and so it really needs to
Speaker 2: hit hard immediately, and it does. Just lots shifting psychedelic
Speaker 2: CGI landscapes, fractals and particles, virtual reality bodies, including a
Speaker 2: pair of lovers who merge in their love making into
Speaker 2: a single extra dimensional dragonfly. And then there's a butterfly,
Speaker 2: a bird, a terosaur, a haunted castle, an electric vortex,
Speaker 2: and then finally like a reading rainbow butterfly.
Speaker 3: I love when it turns into the haunted castle, because
Speaker 3: that has nothing to do with anything that came before.
Speaker 3: But suddenly we're in Spirit Halloween and this is just
Speaker 3: an animated castle. It's a whoo and bats flying through
Speaker 3: the sky. But then when we get close to the bats,
Speaker 3: we realize they're not bats, they're terosaurs with devil tongues.
Speaker 3: And one of the terosaurs crashes into the quote camera
Speaker 3: and breaks the glass of the lens, sort of just
Speaker 3: spiderwebs of fracture across the screen, and then the does
Speaker 3: the terrator kind of like slide down like a It
Speaker 3: does like a bug smeared on a windshield.
Speaker 2: So, on one hand, this whole intro bit feels very demo,
Speaker 2: you know. It feels like they're saying someone is saying,
Speaker 2: look what CGI can do for you. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, we are definitely seeing parts of a sequence
Speaker 2: from the nineteen ninety two film The lawnmower Man. This,
Speaker 2: of course, was a science fiction horror movie directed by
Speaker 2: Brett Leonard and originally sort of kind of based on
Speaker 2: a Stephen King's story, but I believe he was able
Speaker 2: to get his name taken off of that. The original
Speaker 2: lawnmower Man short story is very creepy but has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with virtual reality or computers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've looked at this up before. I think the
Speaker 3: movie has nothing to do with this story except that
Speaker 3: there is a guy who operates a lawnmower. That's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so there's a scene I had to go.
Speaker 2: I was able to find this online include a link
Speaker 2: for here, jove you wanted to check it out. But
Speaker 2: there's a sequence in The lawnmower Man where the character
Speaker 2: job Smith played by Jeff fay uh he had he
Speaker 2: invites his girlfriend Marnie Burke played by Jenny Wright, to, hey,
Speaker 2: come join me in the cyber realm for some of
Speaker 2: the cyber sex. And so they're in these you know,
Speaker 2: virtual reality harnesses, and then we see in the virtual
Speaker 2: realm they are these two lovers that you know, embrace
Speaker 2: each other and then they sort of like merge with
Speaker 2: each other become a dragonfly. But in The lawnmower Man,
Speaker 2: this sequence takes a dark turn. She like gets stuck
Speaker 2: in the like the ground or something, and then she
Speaker 2: starts freaking out and he turns into a monster and
Speaker 2: eats her. So we do not see anybody turn into
Speaker 2: a monster and beyond the mind's eye because Obviously that
Speaker 2: doesn't fit the vibe here. This is not this is
Speaker 2: not about feeling anxious about technology. This isn't about being
Speaker 2: afraid that technology is going to eat you. This is
Speaker 2: about what technology can transform you into. And it's not
Speaker 2: a monster. It is you know, the eternity.
Speaker 3: Well, but we do go from the cybersex to the
Speaker 3: Haunted Castle. But it's I guess nothing bad appears to
Speaker 3: happen to the two lovers on the screen. It's just
Speaker 3: like we're looking at something else now, and it is
Speaker 3: a haunted castle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that haunted castle looks inviting though. It's like it's
Speaker 2: like you said, spirit Halloween territory. It's like, don't you
Speaker 2: want to go over there and meet the fun vampires
Speaker 2: that live there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's castle. They give out the full sized candy
Speaker 3: bars exactly.
Speaker 2: Now. Multiple individuals and I believe studios worked on the
Speaker 2: CGI sequences for The lawnmower Man, but they include let's see,
Speaker 2: there's a Gimmel Everett, who lived nineteen fifty one through
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, who also worked on ninety five's Virtuosity and
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight Killer Clowns from Outer Space.
Speaker 3: The Virtuosity is the movie with a virtual reality character
Speaker 3: played by Russell Crowe who is a virtual serial killer
Speaker 3: who comes into the real world. And the main thing
Speaker 3: I remember about it is that the trailer for the
Speaker 3: movie had Russell Crowe walking through mall while playing Stay
Speaker 3: in Alive.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think they basically they three D print him
Speaker 2: and he's a carbon based organism with blue blood or
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 3: It's reverse tron is the situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sounds like a great idea. I think I saw
Speaker 2: it back in the day and I remember enjoying it.
Speaker 2: But let's see. We also have Helene Plotkin who also
Speaker 2: worked on something that she's credited for, nineteen ninety one's
Speaker 2: Liquid Television. Liquid Television that was a similar situation where
Speaker 2: they're bringing in different like short films and other short projects.
Speaker 2: And then she also was involved in nineteen ninety nine's
Speaker 2: Toy Story two. And then there's Brett Leonard born nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty nine, who also worked on Virtuosity and Killer Clowns
Speaker 2: from out He Space. He also directed the music video
Speaker 2: for Peter Gabriel's Kiss That Frog in two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: which I had great track, amazing album, big fan of Us.
Speaker 2: The other interesting thing about Brett Leonard, who again it's
Speaker 2: some connection to this film is that he directed the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine film The Dead Pit, a horror movie
Speaker 2: that is best known to VHS fans for its box
Speaker 2: VHS box with the light up eyes. So look up
Speaker 2: an image of this. If you ever went into a
Speaker 2: VHS rental store back in the day, you inevitably saw this.
Speaker 2: And if the people running the place remember to refresh
Speaker 2: its batteries, it's the eyes on the front of the
Speaker 2: VHS box would light up.
Speaker 3: That's a really good gimmick. I you know, I feel
Speaker 3: I was a connoisseur of VHS boxes in the nineties
Speaker 3: in the video store, and I don't remember this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's not a I don't think. I
Speaker 2: don't know anything about the film itself, and I never
Speaker 2: rented it. How could I. I was a child and
Speaker 2: this was scary, But you know it's I've seen it
Speaker 2: for sale and you know, prize by collectors. So anyway,
Speaker 2: those are just some of the folks that were connected
Speaker 2: to these sequences from The lawnmower Man, which have been
Speaker 2: repurposed here in Beyond the Mind's Eye. And this won't
Speaker 2: be the last time we see lawnmower man footage in
Speaker 2: this feature.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, that's just the introductory segment. We cannot speak
Speaker 3: at great length about all of the segments in the movie,
Speaker 3: but we'll try to talk about at least most of
Speaker 3: them for a bit. The second one I thought was
Speaker 3: also pretty interesting. This one is called Seeds, and it's
Speaker 3: an animation on the concept of pan spermia, with like
Speaker 3: a nut or a thing that looks kind of like
Speaker 3: a pumpkin seed flying through space and then landing on Earth.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I said a pumpkin seed, because
Speaker 3: it doesn't look like a pumpkin seed. It's some other
Speaker 3: kind of seed. I don't know what seed.
Speaker 2: Would you compare it to, rob It's just a big
Speaker 2: old space seed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, caraway seed or something. It's a
Speaker 3: big old seed. It flies through space and then it
Speaker 3: plunks down on Earth, and then it gives rise to
Speaker 3: life on Earth, and we see all kinds of just
Speaker 3: kind of you know, life dancing about. We see trees
Speaker 3: as groovy shape shifting dancing machines. Like the trees to
Speaker 3: the beat of the song, they shift to transform into
Speaker 3: different kinds of trees with different arrangements of branches and leaves,
Speaker 3: which again goes back to this morphing concept that we
Speaker 3: see throughout this whole thing. So there's all these kinds
Speaker 3: of different representations of life growing and morphing and shifting
Speaker 3: and taking these different forms, and then eventually there are
Speaker 3: these pods, these plants that grow as pods that end
Speaker 3: up shooting seeds back out into space. So it's as
Speaker 3: if the cycle continues.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Apparently this sequence uses imagery created by computer graphics
Speaker 2: artists and researcher Carl Simms born nineteen sixty two from
Speaker 2: his nineteen ninety short Panspermia. He incidentally served as a
Speaker 2: producer on the first Minds I release, and this footage
Speaker 2: would later be used in the Boydsten directed music video
Speaker 2: for Pantera's cover of the Black Sabbath instrumental Planet Caravan,
Speaker 2: and you can also find this on YouTube.
Speaker 3: I love Sabbath, I like that song. I did listen
Speaker 3: and watch this, and I don't love the pinter A cover.
Speaker 2: I have to say this whole Panspermia section, I felt
Speaker 2: like this one felt perhaps more dated by today's standards
Speaker 2: than the intro, perhaps because a lot of it hinges
Speaker 2: on depictions of natural world organisms like actual plants, actual animals,
Speaker 2: And again, what it accomplishes for nineteen ninety or nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two is amazing. But I don't know. On top
Speaker 2: of that, it's not my favorite Hommer track beyond the
Speaker 2: Mind's Eye. But things do pick up again when we
Speaker 2: get back into the depictions of actual alien pant spermia
Speaker 2: with the big seed launching cannon plants and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Okay. The next segment I thought was interesting
Speaker 3: because it's called Afternoon Adventure, and this track incorporates both
Speaker 3: live action and computer animation, and it over lays one
Speaker 3: on top of the other, so we get shots. At
Speaker 3: least that's what I think is going on. I don't
Speaker 3: think that's cgi. It couldn't be. No, it is, it seems.
Speaker 3: For example, we get a footage of a real forest
Speaker 3: that is overlaid with animated insects, and we see a
Speaker 3: wasp chasing a bee. And what I love is that
Speaker 3: the Onhammer track that is paired with this sounds like
Speaker 3: chase music from an action film in the eighties or
Speaker 3: like from Miami Vice. It's like sick, you know, like
Speaker 3: guitar shredding kind of Chase music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like like that bee just robbed a bank
Speaker 2: and the wasp is on the case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Wasp, you're a loose cannon. But this has a
Speaker 3: kind of twist ending actually, So at the you know,
Speaker 3: we go around and we see a lot of the
Speaker 3: landscape and we end up zooming out in this one,
Speaker 3: and we zoom out and out and out, and we
Speaker 3: go up in the sky and see this whole, you know,
Speaker 3: the contours of the earth and the lakes and the
Speaker 3: rivers and the hills, and we keep zooming out until
Speaker 3: we go through a glass barrier and we realized the
Speaker 3: landscape where we were watching these insects interact was inside
Speaker 3: of a dome, a dome in space on the surface
Speaker 3: of a barren moon. And there are many domes like it.
Speaker 2: What this is great though, because, yeah, it starts off
Speaker 2: seeming like, yeah, bold choice to feature both live action
Speaker 2: and computer generated bugs, especially since you know, you really
Speaker 2: can't create a photorealistic bug at this point. But yeah,
Speaker 2: by the time you get to the domes, amazing. This
Speaker 2: is exactly what you want out of your CGI imagery
Speaker 2: at this point in time. Let us depict other worlds,
Speaker 2: Let us depict you know, the future show us give
Speaker 2: us this revelation, and it does. Now.
Speaker 3: The next segment I think, is called Brave New World.
Speaker 3: It is sort of a representation of the insides of
Speaker 3: a computer, but rendered in a dramatic, almost heroic fashion,
Speaker 3: And as I was watching it, it actually looked quite
Speaker 3: familiar to me, and I started thinking, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: is this footage that was created for those Intel Pennium
Speaker 3: commercials in the nineties.
Speaker 2: It might have been. I was looking around for an example,
Speaker 2: and I kept running across other Intel commercials, so I'm
Speaker 2: not sure about that. But yeah, we get dancing, floating
Speaker 2: silver squares, and then we enter various geometric shapes, a
Speaker 2: real kaleidoscope experience, and the track here from Jon Hammer
Speaker 2: is very soothing. But then it picks up the pace
Speaker 2: as we sail through the insides of a computer, and
Speaker 2: this is where we get into familiar processor commercial territory. Eventually,
Speaker 2: a golden titan rises from the computer realm to lift
Speaker 2: up a giant gear and oh, we realized this titan
Speaker 2: is Atlas. And I'm not sure I love the idea
Speaker 2: of computer technology as a shackled, eternally punished titan. I
Speaker 2: don't know exactly what we're trying to portray there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, whether it's the Greek themes or it's going in
Speaker 3: a different direction with some kind of I don't know,
Speaker 3: iron Rand meditation. In any case, this one doesn't hit
Speaker 3: so great for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the Titan looks cool, I will say that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's see. After this, there's a segment called I
Speaker 3: think Transformers. This one really looks like a video game,
Speaker 3: and I think that's because in part it is reproducing
Speaker 3: footage from The lawnmower Man of a video game they
Speaker 3: play in the lawnmower Man. And then also I think
Speaker 3: we actually just straight up see the Job, a character
Speaker 3: from lawnmower Man in.
Speaker 2: This we do like the raging virtual job.
Speaker 3: Where he's yeah, he's mad.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then there's I haven't seen The lawnmower Man
Speaker 2: in a while. I didn't didn't have time to watch
Speaker 2: it in full for this, but yeah, there's a sequence
Speaker 2: in lawnmower Man where they're at an arcade. They're playing
Speaker 2: some sort of like a racing game, and we see
Speaker 2: the virtual footage from that part of the film here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, the race part being its people's zoomings through
Speaker 3: a kind of corridor with these closing teeth that you
Speaker 3: have to kind of navigate through gaps in.
Speaker 2: This reminds me there was there was a video game
Speaker 2: tie into the lawnmower Man and MYO. My video game
Speaker 2: capabilities at the time were very limited. I think I
Speaker 2: had a Sega Genesis and they put this game out
Speaker 2: on Sega Genesis, and I remember wanting it because basically,
Speaker 2: with the limited capacity of the Sega Genesis, they were
Speaker 2: able to create some sort of virtual sections, you know,
Speaker 2: where you're like flying around in a three dimensional space,
Speaker 2: something that you know, by today's standards is just old hat,
Speaker 2: but at the time on Genesis, like it was like, whoa,
Speaker 2: you can do things like that on this machine. I
Speaker 2: want in. Even though I don't know how I feel
Speaker 2: about that movie, I want to play the game. And
Speaker 2: to be clear, I think other parts of the game
Speaker 2: were just typical side scrolling, but they had some sort
Speaker 2: of a gimmicked sort of reality section.
Speaker 3: Okay, oh but wait a minute. This one's called Transformers
Speaker 3: and there's something like a transformer in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we do get We do get some sort
Speaker 2: of a laser night that's chasing around a transformer like
Speaker 2: a robot that changes into a race car. I don't
Speaker 2: know if this is an actual transformer or a gobot
Speaker 2: or just a general riff on the overall concept, but
Speaker 2: there it is.
Speaker 3: Man. So the next segment is one that really was
Speaker 3: a hit for me. It's probably the cheesiest segment, or
Speaker 3: one of the cheesiest in it, but I loved it,
Speaker 3: especially because of how catchy the music is. This is
Speaker 3: the one called Too Far, which has more different imagery
Speaker 3: in it than I can possibly recount here. But it's
Speaker 3: got what these sort of jazz design robots playing drums
Speaker 3: on a crumbling planet surface with desolate gray buildings. What
Speaker 3: a weird juxtaposition. So it's like a ray post apocalyptic
Speaker 3: world with ruined buildings. But these happy robots made of
Speaker 3: these kind of jazz squiggles are all like, oh boy,
Speaker 3: I'm feeling the feeling the groove.
Speaker 2: It's like you had a monkey's paw and you wished
Speaker 2: that windows clip Art became like syndient. You know, we're
Speaker 2: not clip art really. What's his name? The paper Clippy Clippy.
Speaker 2: It's like Clippy and his like demonic kin were brought
Speaker 2: to life and they're here to rock out at least
Speaker 2: in theory, but you know it's gonna get violent.
Speaker 3: Clip multicolored Clippy family reunion and they're all playing hand drums. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and uh, but then it's not just that. There's also
Speaker 3: an angry looking like hamhead guy sitting watching a TV
Speaker 3: and a necktie and he keeps kind of burping and
Speaker 3: his head comes off and then it sinks down into
Speaker 3: his neck and then it pops off again. And he's
Speaker 3: watching things on TV. And we see what he's watching
Speaker 3: on the TV, which is I think, robots on roller coasters.
Speaker 3: And then there's there's more TV watching themes with something
Speaker 3: that's just a straight up eyeball watching a TV. But
Speaker 3: then it gets scared and it hides behind the couch.
Speaker 2: Ah. You know. The roller coaster, the virtual roller coaster thing,
Speaker 2: of course, has never gotten old like that basically spawned
Speaker 2: a whole video game franchise, and I think Regal Cinema
Speaker 2: still rolls that out at the beginning of their seeing
Speaker 2: a picture in Regal Cinema. Right, you get to ride
Speaker 2: that virtual roller coaster a little bit. I think some
Speaker 2: people like will put their hands up to get into it.
Speaker 3: You know, I'll do that. Oh and then so this
Speaker 3: musical number has some vocals in it. Vocals are not
Speaker 3: super prominent in the music throughout this but a couple
Speaker 3: of tracks have vocals. Uh. And the only lyrics you
Speaker 3: get in this song, which again the segment is called
Speaker 3: too Far. We see these sort of these these three
Speaker 3: singers with big hair, all three of them. It's CGI singers.
Speaker 3: Of course. I don't know if I needed to say that,
Speaker 3: but yes, these sort of sort of CGI mannic figures
Speaker 3: with huge hair, and they're singing too far, take it easy,
Speaker 3: It's all right? What are those three phrases? How do
Speaker 3: they interlock? Too far? Take it easy, It's all right?
Speaker 2: It's like what the stages of grief or something?
Speaker 3: Right? Okay? Oh, and then there's like a whole eyeball family.
Speaker 3: Remember there was an eyeball earlier that was watching the
Speaker 3: TV and it got scared. But now there's a whole
Speaker 3: family of eyeballs. Is like a mommy and daddy eyeball.
Speaker 3: And then I'm a lot of little eyeballs and they're
Speaker 3: all watching the TV, and they're watching a robot on
Speaker 3: TV tell us that we've gone too far. And then
Speaker 3: my favorite part of the whole thing is we see
Speaker 3: this assembly line inside of a factory that makes terminators.
Speaker 3: They're just making terminator exoskeletons, good, pumping out T eight hundreds,
Speaker 3: and then they produce a canned beverage called Too Far Juice.
Speaker 3: Funny tie in here. I just on a lark. I
Speaker 3: don't know why it even occurred to me to do this.
Speaker 3: I was like, wonder if there's anything in reality called
Speaker 3: Too Far Juice? And I googled it and there is
Speaker 3: a brewery based in Minnesota called the Fair State Brewing
Speaker 3: Cooperative that I've never had a beer from them, so
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about them, except they have a
Speaker 3: beer called Too Far Juice, and I compared it. The
Speaker 3: can design looks exactly like this can in beyond the
Speaker 3: mind's eyes. That is a deep reference for a brewery
Speaker 3: to make. I don't know how that happened.
Speaker 2: I think it's just because of just all the beer
Speaker 2: out there. I'm not really a beer enthusiast, but I
Speaker 2: love seeing the variety. There's so many different beers. There's
Speaker 2: so many different like cool names for beers, and you
Speaker 2: even see cool stuff like the Wayland Utani beer. Aspen
Speaker 2: beer was finally brought into reality recently as a promotion
Speaker 2: for Alien Romulus by Angel City Brewery, you could finally
Speaker 2: get a can of the beer that they're drinking on
Speaker 2: the Nostromo in the original nineteen seventy nine Alien film.
Speaker 3: It's very safe to drink.
Speaker 2: But yeah, this does seem like a much deeper cut.
Speaker 2: Too Far Juice seems that maybe a bit too far.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many people who drank it really
Speaker 2: caught the reference, but you know, tip of the hat
Speaker 2: to those that did.
Speaker 3: If I'm ever visiting Minnesota, I'm gonna have to get
Speaker 3: me a too Far Juice.
Speaker 2: Well, this whole segment here of beyond the mind's eye,
Speaker 2: this one really made me want my MTV. This felt very,
Speaker 2: very in line with the Dire Straits video Yes for
Speaker 2: Money for Nothing. Yeah, so that's the vibe I got here.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah. Let's see. Now there are still more segments
Speaker 3: to talk about. There's one called Windows. It's kind of
Speaker 3: a change of pace because this one is fairly melancholy,
Speaker 3: like most of the others are I don't know, the
Speaker 3: others are jaunty here, they're you know, more of a
Speaker 3: kind of a spirit of fun or excitement. This one
Speaker 3: is a little bit down tim and a little bit sad,
Speaker 3: and we see a room full of paintings and wine
Speaker 3: bottles and a lute, and then the lute floats off
Speaker 3: of the wall, and then everything starts floating in the
Speaker 3: air and flying around, and there's a guitar solo, and
Speaker 3: it ends sort of with classic classical two D paintings
Speaker 3: like van Goffs self portrait peeling out into three dimensions.
Speaker 2: And this effect is pretty cool. I thought this held
Speaker 2: up pretty good. It doesn't feel as dated as as
Speaker 2: a lot of things inherently feel dated in this picture.
Speaker 2: And I like the music here, especially the early goings
Speaker 2: of it are very chill, very gentle. The gentle young
Speaker 2: hammer agree.
Speaker 3: Now the gentle themes continue because the next segment is
Speaker 3: quite tender. It's like a love story, and it actually
Speaker 3: has dialogue. We didn't have that since the intro. So
Speaker 3: the music here it's called nothing but Love, and it
Speaker 3: sounds kind of like soft acoustic guitar. We meet two
Speaker 3: different characters named Latta and Arturo, and we see a
Speaker 3: note on the wall that says a lot of birthday,
Speaker 3: see you at seven, virtually yours Arturo. So I guess
Speaker 3: these are characters that know they are. They're conscious self
Speaker 3: consciously virtual characters, but they're both sort of red tinted
Speaker 3: CGI bodies. Arturo comes in and meets Lata, and then
Speaker 3: he offers her a magic checkered cube kind of like
Speaker 3: a Rubik's cube that turns into a flying, liquid metal snake.
Speaker 3: And then Lota turns old and looks mad, and then
Speaker 3: we get dialogue and she says, I don't want your sculptures.
Speaker 3: I love you, and then they kiss and then they
Speaker 3: twirl and then they melt together as liquid metal.
Speaker 2: That's what love in the virtual realm consists of. I
Speaker 2: guess we have kind of This is like an Adam
Speaker 2: and Eve sort of thing. Right is the red sculpture
Speaker 2: and Apple the snake? Self explanatory?
Speaker 3: Okay, I didn't think about that. The next one is great.
Speaker 3: It's called Pyramid. I love this one. It's got some
Speaker 3: interesting kind of flute sounds. It sounds almost kind of
Speaker 3: South American or something. And then it's got like a
Speaker 3: dog chasing butterflies, these strange marionette gods dancing on top
Speaker 3: of a pyramid with a yellow flaming sky. This is
Speaker 3: the one that's got a lady with like leopard print
Speaker 3: on her flesh. At one point, she says, we are
Speaker 3: of the butterfly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's inherently trippy and cryptic. But the
Speaker 2: dancing gods or statues or whatever they are, these were monstrous,
Speaker 2: but in the sense too that like they're moving in
Speaker 2: a way that maybe trying to pattern like human dance movements,
Speaker 2: but it just feels very clunky and inhuman. But I
Speaker 2: don't know that kind of works. If these are gods,
Speaker 2: why not. They're not of our world, And generally I
Speaker 2: like the other worldliness of this section, you know, strange pyramids,
Speaker 2: weird gods, talking leopard ladies. I'm all for it. You know.
Speaker 3: I've got a real beef with be on the mind side, though,
Speaker 3: which is that up to this point there have been
Speaker 3: not nearly enough human bodies with horse heads. They're about
Speaker 3: to do me right here. So Theater of Magic is
Speaker 3: the next segment. It's got everything you want. It's got
Speaker 3: mirrors with masks flying around inside them. It's got a
Speaker 3: theater lobby staircase. So it's like that animation at the
Speaker 3: movie Theater where you go out of the It shows
Speaker 3: you going out of the theater and out the staircase
Speaker 3: down the staircase to the lobby to get some refreshments. Here,
Speaker 3: it's the opposite. You're going up the staircase in the lobby.
Speaker 3: And then we see a marble statue of a man
Speaker 3: playing an obo at a marble lion, which comes to
Speaker 3: life on an alien planet, jumps over a flaming brazier,
Speaker 3: goes into a maze, and then we see a volcano
Speaker 3: explode and this turns into a metallic woman with a
Speaker 3: horse head.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I love I love this. I love the creatures,
Speaker 2: the weird landscapes, the virtual reality zooms, the labyrinth, that
Speaker 2: volcano spewing dianetics everywhere, great stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Oh, and this is the one that's got
Speaker 3: the eyeball metronomes. At one point, we're just on a
Speaker 3: planet surface and they're metronomes ticking everywhere, and they've got
Speaker 3: eyeballs at the top of the ticker whatever you call that,
Speaker 3: the I don't know what it's called, the part that
Speaker 3: ticks on a metronome. It's like Easter Island, but with
Speaker 3: eyeball metronomes. And then we see a Golden War galley
Speaker 3: rowing into space. Hey, connecting to recent episodes, this is
Speaker 3: was this a triream. I don't think so. It just
Speaker 3: looks like one level of ores.
Speaker 2: To me, this looked like, yeah, we have elements of
Speaker 2: sort of fantasy Viking here. We Yeah, this is take
Speaker 2: it for what it is. It's a crazy space galley
Speaker 2: and it is amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so we also in this one gets some
Speaker 3: mixing of live action shots of locations and models, like
Speaker 3: a room and a house with CGI and then a
Speaker 3: landscape with green clouds and lightning. I recall this one
Speaker 3: kind of ends abruptly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, some of them do. Like, Okay, we've said
Speaker 2: all we can say about this, move on to the
Speaker 2: next one.
Speaker 3: That sort of thing. Okay, very last segment. This one
Speaker 3: starts with space imagery. It depicts a quasar, like a
Speaker 3: rotating black hole, surrounded by this big disc of orange dust,
Speaker 3: the jets coming out the poles. We see a sea
Speaker 3: scape and there is a mermaid with one of those
Speaker 3: seashell bras and she I noticed this about the mermaid.
Speaker 3: She's got hinges like her tail, like hinges her fishtail does,
Speaker 3: which made me think she's supposed to be not an
Speaker 3: organic mermaid but a toy come to life.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: So. Yeah, but in any case, she flies into the sky,
Speaker 3: and then we get a trio of naked male figures
Speaker 3: without faces, so the interior of the skull is just smooth,
Speaker 3: and they start folding upon themselves and into each other,
Speaker 3: and it becomes just this kaleidoscopic exercise of folding and
Speaker 3: mixing and blending these naked male forms altogether.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one's pretty cool. You could imagine this playing
Speaker 2: on the big screen behind you know, your favorite prog
Speaker 2: rock band or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then we go to credits, which there are
Speaker 3: a lot of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a solid ten minutes of credits. Like
Speaker 2: I was expecting at least five more minutes of computer
Speaker 2: animated mayhem, but no, just ten minutes of credits. But
Speaker 2: that also means ten more minutes of Yon Homer music
Speaker 2: and it's pretty good. And you know, to their credit
Speaker 2: they do shout out seemingly everybody involved in the creation
Speaker 2: of these images, so you know, well worth a look.
Speaker 3: All right, So we've done a basic outline of the
Speaker 3: content of Beyond the Mind's Eye. But I was so
Speaker 3: curious about why this movie feels, so I don't know,
Speaker 3: potent with meaning and historical significance, and so I thought
Speaker 3: we might analyze a little bit here or see what
Speaker 3: we can come up with at least, And one way
Speaker 3: of thinking about it that was sticking in my mind
Speaker 3: is that, you know, I'm pretty strongly persuaded by medium
Speaker 3: is the message kind of analysis. In other words, I
Speaker 3: think a lot of times the practical functional characteristics of
Speaker 3: a medium of information delivery often influence are thinking about
Speaker 3: the world more powerfully than the content of the information delivered.
Speaker 3: So a classic example of this kind of thinking, I've
Speaker 3: mentioned this on the show before is the kind of
Speaker 3: Neil Postman idea that the invention of television had a
Speaker 3: powerful influence on culture because the format of TV puts
Speaker 3: a primary emphasis on the entertainment value of information. So
Speaker 3: what's important is the ability of something to grab and
Speaker 3: hold on to your visual attention, So that when printed
Speaker 3: news shifted to TV news, you also get a shift
Speaker 3: in our fundamental concept of news worthiness that what was
Speaker 3: newsworthy became more likely to be synonymous with what's most
Speaker 3: entertaining or attention holding, et cetera. So, thinking with that
Speaker 3: kind of analysis, I started to wonder, what, if anything,
Speaker 3: are the distinct messages that are hidden in the medium
Speaker 3: of computer animation as distinct from the medium of live
Speaker 3: action film or from traditional animation. One of the things
Speaker 3: that absolutely stood out to me about it is that
Speaker 3: there is an incredibly strong theme of absorption running throughout.
Speaker 3: It is hard to watch Beyond the mind's eye and
Speaker 3: not come away thinking that your essence will somehow be
Speaker 3: absorbed and subsumed into a kind of metallic goop out
Speaker 3: of which infinite other forms will be assembled and then
Speaker 3: liquidated once again. So you are not necessarily discreet. You
Speaker 3: are a quantity of mold material, which can be both
Speaker 3: frightening and exciting. The kind of friendly version of this
Speaker 3: idea is oneness with the universe, but the more the
Speaker 3: more threatening version is just that kind of like you
Speaker 3: are raw material that something or someone could turn into anything.
Speaker 2: This reminds me of stuff we've discussed in the show
Speaker 2: before concerning the ideas of Jaron Lanier that you know
Speaker 2: when it comes to social media, and that is that
Speaker 2: you are not the user. You are the product. You're
Speaker 2: a part of this grand thing, but you were You're
Speaker 2: not playing the role in it that you thought you were.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, it's certainly worth thinking about. But I
Speaker 2: agree there is a tangible desire that is evident in
Speaker 2: this film that like, you want to be absorbed by
Speaker 2: a comforting digital world. You know, a strong sense of
Speaker 2: technological optimism along those lines where about where computer culture
Speaker 2: is headed, where it can take you, and it does
Speaker 2: don't entertain the possibility that CGI technology will eat us,
Speaker 2: even though again that's definitely a part of the lawnmower
Speaker 2: Man sequences that were cut out for Beyond the Mind's Eye.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, there's a fine line between being absorbed and
Speaker 3: being eaten, I guess. I mean just the absorption themes
Speaker 3: are more they feel more wholesome and inviting. It's just
Speaker 3: kind of like, yeah, you're going to become a part
Speaker 3: of it all, and then all of that will become
Speaker 3: many other things.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting that like kind of ties into some
Speaker 2: aspects of the psychedelic experience, which of course, you know
Speaker 2: differs from the person to person. But you know, this
Speaker 2: idea of interconnectedness, realizing that you're all part of like
Speaker 2: one people, one planet. You know that all these interpersonal
Speaker 2: connections are the most valuable things in your life, and
Speaker 2: there's this idea Okay, well, maybe the future is going
Speaker 2: to be a technological version of that and it sort
Speaker 2: of is, but it also sort of isn't, or it
Speaker 2: can be that with a more negative air to it,
Speaker 2: you know, it's I guess the reality of something is
Speaker 2: always like maybe not a complete divorce from the initial optimism,
Speaker 2: but there are other dimensions to it as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can absolutely see that. Man. One thing I
Speaker 3: really think about that stands out in all this early
Speaker 3: CGI is the strong communicated idea that the essence of
Speaker 3: all reality is essentially geometric, that the underlying structure of
Speaker 3: planets and trees and human beings and music and love
Speaker 3: and starlight is polyhedrons. And I don't know exactly like
Speaker 3: if you sort of take on that feeling, how that
Speaker 3: catches out into values or other beliefs about the world.
Speaker 3: But it is hard to deny that that is a
Speaker 3: feeling created by watching this stuff. Everything turns into a
Speaker 3: series of intersecting angles and lines, and that can create
Speaker 3: a very elegant feeling, the kind of a kind of
Speaker 3: mathematical beauty and a sense of symmetry in all that,
Speaker 3: Like the idea that the world is reducible to geometry,
Speaker 3: can be a beautiful and romantic way to think about things.
Speaker 3: And it's also like the functional power of math kind
Speaker 3: of leads you to think that, Like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: just thinking of everything as as geometry and math to
Speaker 3: be manipulated means that like almost anything is possible in reality.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm not sure exactly where all that goes.
Speaker 3: But there's a geometric brain mindset that really gets into
Speaker 3: you from watching all of this animation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's like everything is coming out of
Speaker 2: an order, an order that is understood that is literally
Speaker 2: programmed by human beings, Like almost like we're recreating reality,
Speaker 2: but it's a reality that makes sense and is understandable
Speaker 2: and we have full control over.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I guess that's one of the advantages of
Speaker 2: one of the attractions of various like virtual worlds, right,
Speaker 2: it is like a limited version of the real world
Speaker 2: world that we have more control over and we know
Speaker 2: the limits of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of our level of control. Another thing I
Speaker 3: was thinking about with beyond the mind's eye and zooming
Speaker 3: out to the broader issue of CGI as a medium.
Speaker 3: What is the message of the CGI medium. I was
Speaker 3: really thinking about the idea of a moving perspective. So
Speaker 3: in live action and traditional animation, we sometimes have a
Speaker 3: camera or a perspective that moves through the space that
Speaker 3: we're looking at. But more often, i'd say at least
Speaker 3: half the time, you have a static camera or a
Speaker 3: static perspective with moving subjects. So usually when you're watching
Speaker 3: other types of media, you are holding still and the
Speaker 3: subject of the shot is what's in motion. Again, that's changes.
Speaker 3: You know, there are dolly shots, and there are moving
Speaker 3: cameras in film and all that. It happens sometimes, but
Speaker 3: more often you're used to being in one place and
Speaker 3: watching the subject move. When I think about early computer animation,
Speaker 3: it seems to me that the quote camera, though of
Speaker 3: course there is no camera, it's just the you know,
Speaker 3: the selected viewpoint within the three D space. As the
Speaker 3: frames are rendered, it feels like that camera almost never
Speaker 3: stops moving, and in beyond the mind's eye, it's almost
Speaker 3: constantly in motion. And that motion means we are, without
Speaker 3: our say so, being just pulled into scenes and images,
Speaker 3: as with a tractor beam. So the very first animated
Speaker 3: segment of this movie has the viewer plunging through a
Speaker 3: tunnel of lights, and you know, remember what the head
Speaker 3: tells you at the beginning, Actually, it says you are
Speaker 3: now entering a world inside the essence of your imagination,
Speaker 3: look within your dreams. They can take you beyond the
Speaker 3: mind's eye. So I think it's it's not a coincidence
Speaker 3: that this early CGI showcase would use this kind of
Speaker 3: language of being literally taken somewhere. By looking, you are
Speaker 3: a agreeing to be taken somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, enter into the world a dream. I mean
Speaker 2: that lines up with what I was saying earlier about
Speaker 2: more recent AI generated images, that they seem like the
Speaker 2: product of dream. They seem like a dream that you
Speaker 2: have partially forgotten, and that's part of the appeal of it,
Speaker 2: And that's I feel like that's definitely the case here
Speaker 2: in the early nineties with this footage in particular. Also,
Speaker 2: again it fits with the subject matter. It's not really
Speaker 2: there's not really a narrative. It's very abstract. The meaning
Speaker 2: is entirely open to your interpretation for the most part. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's a trip, as Roger Ebert.
Speaker 3: Said, Yeah, exactly, And the constant motion of the viewpoint
Speaker 3: of the perspective or the camera makes it feel like
Speaker 3: it's literally a trip. You are constantly being sucked into
Speaker 3: new places and physically made to look at new things
Speaker 3: as opposed to being where you are and having things
Speaker 3: happen in front of you. Now, what does that kind
Speaker 3: of message cash out? I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 3: it kind of it kind of ties into another line
Speaker 3: and a song in there, the too Far Take it Easy,
Speaker 3: It's all right. It's almost like, you know, this new
Speaker 3: world of technology is going to take you places without
Speaker 3: asking you. It's it's going to overwhelm you and just
Speaker 3: take you there. And now you're looking at this and
Speaker 3: you might not even comprehend or be able to control
Speaker 3: what it is you're seeing now, But just relax and surrender.
Speaker 3: It'll be okay.
Speaker 2: Say yes to the lawnmower Man. Yeah, it weirdly has
Speaker 2: me wanting to rewatch the lawnmower Man or lawnmower Man Too,
Speaker 2: Job's War or whatever other title it had.
Speaker 3: You know, I haven't seen them in a long time.
Speaker 3: I would want to watch them for the animated scenes,
Speaker 3: But what I recall is that the human plot and
Speaker 3: all that is just kind of unpleasant. Yeah, likely, so
Speaker 3: likely so, but who knows, It's been a while. Nobody
Speaker 3: eats yard clippings though, like that was the crew One
Speaker 3: of the crew things about the original king store. Well,
Speaker 3: if the animator merges your form into that of a sheep,
Speaker 3: you might you know, this is liable to happen to
Speaker 3: all of us because our again, our forms are not
Speaker 3: fixed where we can morphit any moment. Oh, and that
Speaker 3: sort of ties into just one last thing I wanted
Speaker 3: to mention. I thought was interesting about trends in early CGI.
Speaker 3: Did you also notice a visual theme that things are
Speaker 3: the same at every scale, That there's like all this
Speaker 3: zooming in and out and going out into space and
Speaker 3: seeing planets and stars and quasars and galaxies and all that,
Speaker 3: and then you zoom in and see microscopic mechanisms and
Speaker 3: cells in a bloodstream, and circuit boards, circuit boards represented
Speaker 3: as cities with skyscrapers and stuff, And so there's this.
Speaker 3: It seemed to me there's this repeated theme throughout a
Speaker 3: lot of early CGI, and it's here in this movie too,
Speaker 3: of a kind of scale agnosticism, that what exists at
Speaker 3: one level of resolution and is reproduced at greater levels
Speaker 3: of resolution. So the more you zoom in or the
Speaker 3: more you zoom out, you just keep seeing the same patterns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, as we inevitably like
Speaker 2: zoom in and out of these imagined micro and macro worlds.
Speaker 3: The message of that is you got to put computers
Speaker 3: inside your body. It's time to be a cyborg.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess. I mean that's part of the that's
Speaker 2: kind of wrapped up in the optimism too, like we'll
Speaker 2: become machines, will become this synthesis of biology and technology,
Speaker 2: and it's just gonna make everything smoother and cooler and shinier.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to be t one thousand coup.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything is crow all right. Well, there you have
Speaker 2: it beyond the mind's eye. I don't know if I'm
Speaker 2: gonna keep exploring the other films in this franchise. It
Speaker 2: seems like somebody should put out a big, thick blu
Speaker 2: ray set like of all of them. Surely that's in
Speaker 2: the works.
Speaker 3: Why has nobody done that? Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I read that some of the extras on one of
Speaker 2: the physical releases of this included a sequence where we
Speaker 2: get to see a young Hummer band in which all
Speaker 2: four members of the band are Yon Hummer. So there
Speaker 2: are some extras like that I'd like to see as well.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find a.
Speaker 3: Stream of that anywhere that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: All right. As of publication time, we have not yet
Speaker 2: heard back from the director. If we do hear back
Speaker 2: from the director, please tune in to the next listener
Speaker 2: Mail episode and we will share his answers to our questions.
Speaker 2: All Right, we're gonna go ahead and close out this
Speaker 2: episode of Weird House Cinema. This one's been fine. We'd
Speaker 2: love to hear from everyone out there. Were you too
Speaker 2: a child of the nineties? Do you remember the commercials
Speaker 2: for this on TV or in print? Did you rent
Speaker 2: or purchase Beyond the Mind's Eye? And how much did
Speaker 2: it blow your mind? We want to hear your thoughts
Speaker 2: on it, and what has it been like to revisit it?
Speaker 2: What are your what are your thoughts on some of
Speaker 2: our various ideas that we presented in this episode. Let's
Speaker 2: see if you uh. We'll just remind you here that
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. These are Friday in the Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a science and
Speaker 2: culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but
Speaker 2: on Fridays we set all that aside for the time being.
Speaker 2: If you want to see a complete list of all
Speaker 2: the films we've covered on Weird House Cinema over the years.
Speaker 2: Go to letterbox dot com. It's L E T T
Speaker 2: E R B O x D dot com. Our profile
Speaker 2: is weird House and you will find the list. Sometimes
Speaker 2: there'll be a sneak peek ahead at what's coming out
Speaker 2: the following week.
Speaker 3: Huge Things, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind dot com.
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