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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is

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Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and today you're going to hear our episode

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Speaker 1: from nine to six, twenty twenty four about Beyond the

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Speaker 1: Mind's I from nineteen ninety two. If you were a

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Speaker 1: person of a certain age, you will definitely remember the

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Speaker 1: TV advertisements for what just seemed like the future of

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Speaker 1: cinema and the future of just human experience. So we

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Speaker 1: hope you enjoy revisiting this episode.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

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Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema, we're doing something a little

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Speaker 3: bit different. Most of the time we focus on narrative

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Speaker 3: feed films, at least within the weird genres, but today

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Speaker 3: we are not looking at a narrative feature film. We're

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Speaker 3: going to be talking about an anthology format art film

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Speaker 3: from nineteen ninety two called Beyond the Mind's Eye, which

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Speaker 3: was the second part in a series of similar films

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Speaker 3: beginning in the year nineteen ninety with The Mind's Eye,

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Speaker 3: a computer animation odyssey. Now, as the name implies, the

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Speaker 3: Mind's Eye films were showcases for computer animation, showcases for

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Speaker 3: sort of the cutting edge of computer based animation techniques

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Speaker 3: of the day, and the typical format of all these

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Speaker 3: films in the Mind's Eye series would be a sequence

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Speaker 3: of musical numbers usually I think, just by a single

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Speaker 3: artist throughout, accompanied by strange computer generated imagery scenes and imagery. Now, Rob,

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Speaker 3: I don't know if you were a to get more

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Speaker 3: clarity on the source of all of these animated segments.

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Speaker 3: One thing that's clear is that a lot of the

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Speaker 3: segments were created for other projects originally things like TV commercials,

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Speaker 3: sci fi movies, video games, demo reels, just industry stuff

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Speaker 3: and so forth, and then a lot of that was

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Speaker 3: edited together and set to music for these projects. But

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Speaker 3: I don't know if that's the case with all of

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Speaker 3: the animation or just some of it. It's possible some

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Speaker 3: segments were created specifically for the mind Sie movies, but

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Speaker 3: I couldn't get a clear answer on that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of those situations where the movie

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Speaker 1: database listings for this title beyond the mind Side that

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Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about here today, scene kind

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Speaker 1: of limited. Now, I will add that the actual credits

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Speaker 1: for the feature itself. I mean, those credits do provide

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Speaker 1: a lot of names and a lot more of additional info,

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Speaker 1: but I feel like to really cite everything and to

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Speaker 1: source and to point to the source of everything that

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Speaker 1: we see in the picture, you're dealing with like a

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Speaker 1: true sort of multimedia archaeology, sort of an exercise that

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Speaker 1: we're we were not really all about here with Weird

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Speaker 1: House Cinema. So we're going to call out some of

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Speaker 1: the people that were involved, but we can't possibly list everyone,

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Speaker 1: because again, this is an anthology of these different films,

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Speaker 1: films that, especially for the time period, often involved like

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Speaker 1: multiple folks bringing it together from a technological and artistic 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 maybe somebody said they rented it from

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

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

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

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Speaker 3: number of hangouts cool hangouts in the early nineties that began, like, dude,

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Speaker 3: you've got to come over and watch this tape I rented.

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Speaker 3: It's so trippy. And so that's the series. But again,

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Speaker 3: the specific film that we're going to be talking about

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Speaker 3: today is the second movie in the Mind's I series

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Speaker 3: called Beyond the Mind's Eye from nineteen ninety two, directed

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Speaker 3: by Michael Boydston and featuring music by Yon Hamer, who

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Speaker 3: I know on the podcast before I've probably called Jan Hammer,

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Speaker 3: but it's Yon Hamer. I found out by listening to

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Speaker 3: an interview. So when I got the idea to do

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Speaker 3: one of these one of the Mind's Eye movies for

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Speaker 3: the show, I was browsing through a list of them

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Speaker 3: and I saw one was by one Head, music by

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Speaker 3: Yon Hamer, and I knew we had to pick the

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Speaker 3: hammer fest. It had to be that one.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Listeners to Weird House Cinema will remember that

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Speaker 1: Yonhammer scored the film I Come In Peace aka Dark Angel,

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Speaker 1: that we previously talked about on the show, and most famously,

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Speaker 1: of course, did the soundtrack for Miami Vice, including that

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Speaker 1: absurdly great track Crockets theme. But anyway, we'll come back

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Speaker 1: to Yon'hammer in a bit, and we'll talk about him

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Speaker 1: a lot, because basically this is a film where his

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Speaker 1: music his front and center. Really, I mean, it's the

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Speaker 1: visuals and then the music of Yon Hamer, and that's

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Speaker 1: what beyond the mind's eye consists of.

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Speaker 3: 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 1: Yeah, I mean, it's very much a snapshot of the time.

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Speaker 1: I mean, this is a nineteen ninety two release. This

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Speaker 1: is the cutting edge computer generated imagery from the early nineties,

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Speaker 1: the very early nineties. And you know, I honestly can't

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Speaker 1: remember if I ever rented this from a video store.

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Speaker 1: It's very possible that I did, but I mostly just

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Speaker 1: remember seeing the commercials for it, because there were a

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Speaker 1: lot of TV commercials for it. As I remember, I'm

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Speaker 1: guessing I was watching, you know, it's probably MTV, maybe

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Speaker 1: the Sci Fi Channel as well. So honestly, I can't

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Speaker 1: remember offhand when that started out. I think it may

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Speaker 1: have started in ninety two, so maybe not Sci Fi Channel,

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Speaker 1: But I feel like MTV at least was prime, prime

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Speaker 1: target area for these commercials. And it really did feel exciting.

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Speaker 1: It felt like a revelation. This is the future, this

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Speaker 1: is what computer generated imagery can do for us, this

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Speaker 1: is what video games can do for us, because our

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Speaker 1: video games were not like this, not yet, but it

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Speaker 1: was the promise that they could be. And in general,

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Speaker 1: it's like, this is the future, and you had every

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Speaker 1: reason to be excited and Honestly, I was looking back

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Speaker 1: on I was thinking about the fact that, well, of

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Speaker 1: course I was a child at the time. I was

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Speaker 1: a kid, so of course I was excited. You know.

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Speaker 1: Did adults feel the same way, Well, obviously they did,

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Speaker 1: because on one hand, these videos were highly successful. They were,

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Speaker 1: you know, on the best sellers lists and all. And

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Speaker 1: I looked around and I found that Roger Ebert was

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Speaker 1: a big fan. On the Ciskel and Eba show. There's

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Speaker 1: a particular episode I was able to You can look

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Speaker 1: it up on the archives and find the full episode.

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Speaker 1: It's the one where they they review Lorenzo's Oil and

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Speaker 1: Chaplain and some other you know, kind of stuffy and

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Speaker 1: certainly non non futuristic movie. But at the end of it,

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Speaker 1: we have Roger Ebert's video pick of the week and

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Speaker 1: it is Beyond the Mind's Eye, and he loves it.

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Speaker 1: He's he says, quote, one day computers will be able

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Speaker 1: to create entire movies and the visual possibilities are breathtaking.

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Speaker 1: Look at where this shot takes us, and they cut

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Speaker 1: to one of the you know, the otherworldly vistas that

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Speaker 1: Beyond the Mind's Eye gives us, and he closes up

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Speaker 1: 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 1: And they would like, Yeah. In nineteen ninety five, that's

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Speaker 1: when we got Toy Story from Pixar, the first fully

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Speaker 1: CGI full length motion pictures, So yeah, it was just

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Speaker 1: about to happen, basically, like they were already in production

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Speaker 1: on Toys. I think that the descript for Toy Story

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Speaker 1: was kind of like finalized in ninety three, so like,

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Speaker 1: really it was about to happen. So I feel like

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Speaker 1: Ebert was correct on all parts. On all accounts here,

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Speaker 1: this is essentially what we're going to see, and we

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Speaker 1: have seen the perfection to some extent, I think of

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Speaker 1: CGI animated films and the Pixar Disney DreamWorks mold. Though

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Speaker 1: of course it's worth pointing out that things like photorealistic

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Speaker 1: CGI has a lot more to contend with. You know,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot more uncanny valley to traverse in that realm,

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Speaker 1: and so I don't know if we've seen anything that

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Speaker 1: truly 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 you know, a computer anime, music video film, but

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Speaker 3: that's not necessarily said about all animated films or even

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Speaker 3: all art films. So, like, what is it about this

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Speaker 3: CGI package film idea that specifically lends itself to descriptions

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Speaker 3: having to do with visionary experiences or psychedelic drugs. I

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Speaker 3: was thinking about this, and this is a theme I'll

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Speaker 3: come back to multiple times in the episode. I've been

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Speaker 3: thinking a lot about linking techniques in the like just

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Speaker 3: practical techniques of computer animation, to the effect that the

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Speaker 3: film has on us. And I was wondering if the

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Speaker 3: trippiness has something to do with the with the particular

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Speaker 3: capabilities of computer animation at the time that by algorithmically

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Speaker 3: changing dimension values across time, for like a shape or

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Speaker 3: an image on the screen, you can create these shifting

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Speaker 3: morphing forms which are all throughout the animated segments in

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Speaker 3: Beyond the Mind's Eye. I would say every single one

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Speaker 3: of them has an image, like a shape or an

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Speaker 3: object that morphs into something else, and these changes from

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Speaker 3: one thing to another very much mirror the form shifting

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Speaker 3: visual effects that people commonly experience on some psychedelic compounds,

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Speaker 3: So I wonder if that's one part of it, that

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Speaker 3: particular capability of computer animation and its similarity to psychedelic

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Speaker 3: visual effects. Of course, having one shape morph into another

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Speaker 3: is something you can do in traditional hand drawn animation

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Speaker 3: as well, but you see it a lot in early CGI,

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Speaker 3: and I wonder if it's because it was like easier

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Speaker 3: to automate by some kind of stepwise manipulation or algorithm

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Speaker 3: of just the number variables that you use to create

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Speaker 3: the dimensions of an image. Another characteristic that I wonder

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Speaker 3: if people were picking up on in describing this movie

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Speaker 3: as psychedelic or trippy, is just that the imagery looks super,

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Speaker 3: super weird in a way that nobody would have been

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Speaker 3: familiar with before CGI. And again this would have to

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Speaker 3: do with the practical state of the industry, Like it

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Speaker 3: was impossible to code a realistic looking human face with

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Speaker 3: computer animation at this time, so realism is off the table.

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Speaker 3: But you also could not easily reproduce familiar hand drawn

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Speaker 3: art styles that had been around for years in traditional animation,

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Speaker 3: so you would by necessity be establishing a whole new

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Speaker 3: visual language for representing forms from the real world, especially

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Speaker 3: like animals and plants and humans, and so by necessity

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Speaker 3: they look the way they're rendered is very unfamiliar to us.

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Speaker 3: It doesn't look either like reality or like any art

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Speaker 3: we're familiar with.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, one thing that becomes obvious as you watch Beyond

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Speaker 1: the Mind's Eye is that a convincing reproduction of the

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Speaker 1: human body was not really achievable at this point, but

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Speaker 1: we still tried, because that's that's human art. We always

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Speaker 1: try to capture our own form in the forms of

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Speaker 1: animals in our vicinity. And yeah, they don't quite hit

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Speaker 1: the mark, but in not hitting the mark completely, there

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Speaker 1: is this it's close enough, you know, it doesn't you know,

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Speaker 1: we're we're vain pattern seeking creatures. So if you get

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Speaker 1: close enough to a human form, we'll identify with it

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Speaker 1: and we'll work with it. Right, So it's still, you know, engrossing,

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Speaker 1: even if some of the characters are still a bit

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Speaker 1: on the grotesque side of.

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Speaker 3: Things, which is the segment that has a human figure

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Speaker 3: but it just has leopard print flesh.

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Speaker 1: We'll have to may maybe that'll come to me as

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Speaker 1: we get into the blow by blow plot of this movie.

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Speaker 1: But but yeah, you have things like like that that occur,

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Speaker 1: and yeah you can still you can still connect with them,

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Speaker 1: you know. I was reminded in all of this, like

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Speaker 1: trying to think about like how it felt to see

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Speaker 1: these things, How it felt to see these kind of representations,

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Speaker 1: even if they, you know, were very by today's stare

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Speaker 1: is like crude representations of like a human body or

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Speaker 1: an animal and whatnot. I'm reminded a little bit of

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Speaker 1: some of the the AI generated images that we've seen

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Speaker 1: more of them. I'm thinking more of the things that

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Speaker 1: were really hitting maybe a year or two ago, you know,

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Speaker 1: during the era where it's like that you could definitely

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Speaker 1: look at the fingers and count the fingers to see

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Speaker 1: if something was computer generated or not AI generated or not.

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Speaker 1: And I think one of the things about those images

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Speaker 1: is that, like the images we're seeing and beyond the

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Speaker 1: mind's eyes when they first hit, they are not achieving

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Speaker 1: like photorealism, they're not completely convincing. You see them and

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Speaker 1: you know something is off, but also in it being off,

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Speaker 1: it's something that you haven't quite seen before. You're like,

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Speaker 1: because I remember the first time I saw some of

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Speaker 1: those AI generated images, I was like, who is this artist,

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Speaker 1: like it's clearly the same person because they all kind

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Speaker 1: of look the same. It's a little different than anything

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Speaker 1: I've seen before, and that makes it enthralling. Then you

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Speaker 1: get then you get bored with it, and you move on.

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Speaker 1: But the technology moves on as well. The technology advances

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Speaker 1: and it's no longer capable or it's no longer creating

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Speaker 1: things like it was before, but the mood is still there,

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Speaker 1: you know.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Now, in terms of your point about like psychedelia

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Speaker 1: and the imagery that we see and beyond the mind's eye,

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Speaker 1: it is interesting to think about how there's probably a

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Speaker 1: number of nexus points between like various counterculture movements and

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Speaker 1: folks as well as some of the individuals who are

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Speaker 1: like pushing these developments. You know, I'm thinking of, you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of Silicon Valley types, that convergence of programming and art,

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Speaker 1: like those worlds are probably you know, inevitably bumping up

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Speaker 1: against each other. Here.

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

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

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And at the same time, like think about it,

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Speaker 1: it's ninety two. A new millennium is coming and it's

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Speaker 1: coming fast, and so there are a lot of ideas

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Speaker 1: about like what is going to happen, how are we

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Speaker 1: transforming for this new millennium, How is technology going to

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Speaker 1: change us? How can we elevate ourselves through it? So

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Speaker 1: there's a you know, there's always a certain amount of anxiety, obviously,

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Speaker 1: but there is also a certain amount of technological optimism

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Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, you can also see

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Speaker 1: other examples of this, you know, sort of like trance

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Speaker 1: music culture taking up various sort of futurism ideas, you know,

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Speaker 1: thinking about the blending of say, you know, music and

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Speaker 1: the writings of Terrence mckinna and so forth. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: I feel like Beyond the Mind's Eye seems to set

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Speaker 1: right alongside that. And also the title is just so perfect.

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Speaker 1: I'm always a little bit shocked to realize that it's

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Speaker 1: called Beyond the Mind's Eye because it's the second in

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Speaker 1: a series, and the first was just the mind's eye,

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Speaker 1: because beyond the mind's eye is perfect because there is

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Speaker 1: this sense that like it is promising to show you

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Speaker 1: things that you cannot imagine yet, like it takes this

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Speaker 1: technological evolution in order for us to even conceive of

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Speaker 1: these ideas, you know, like, that's that's how this hit,

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Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, And so hopefully, you know, we'll be able to

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Speaker 1: hold on to that as we continue discussing this film,

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Speaker 1: because on one lefe, we do have to look at

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Speaker 1: it as a thing that doesn't hit the same anymore,

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Speaker 1: that is going to feel more uncanny than it did,

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Speaker 1: that is going to feel rougher around the edges than

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Speaker 1: it did back in the day. But at the same time,

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Speaker 1: I just want to be clear that nobody can discount

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Speaker 1: how impressive this felt back in the early nineties, and

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Speaker 1: it is a snapshot of cutting edge technological artistic achievement

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Speaker 1: of 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, I mean, what is there

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

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's going to I think on one hand,

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Speaker 1: the music, of course, still stands up. Jon Hammer's music

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Speaker 1: is tremendous, and so that's going to pull you in

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Speaker 1: and if nothing else, it's going to relax you. The

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Speaker 1: images are going to relax you. There's nothing here that

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Speaker 1: can hurt you. This movie is like a nice, warm hug.

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Speaker 1: It spoons you for its runtime of what an hour

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Speaker 1: and some change, and yeah, you can you can giggle

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Speaker 1: a little bit at how some of the effects hold

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Speaker 1: up today, but it's it's still it's still impressive, all right. Now. Sadly,

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Speaker 1: I could not find a rip of the TV spot

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Speaker 1: for Beyond the Mind's Eye, either to include or just

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Speaker 1: to re experience it, because I know I must have

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Speaker 1: seen this commercial hundreds of times back in the day,

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Speaker 1: But as far as I could tell, nobody has ripped

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Speaker 1: it and uploaded it, 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 1: Now fortunately you can find the film itself. There are

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Speaker 1: a lot of streaming options for it out on the web,

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Speaker 1: and you can still buy it on DVD. That's assuming

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Speaker 1: you don't want to go retro and get yourself a

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Speaker 1: 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 to laser.

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Speaker 1: It seems like there would be there probably are a

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Speaker 1: laser disc enthusiasts out there. I know for a while

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Speaker 1: they held on because there were still certain films and there.

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Speaker 1: This may still be the case where there had not

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Speaker 1: been a release superior to the laser disc release, so

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure. All right, Well, let's briefly talk about

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Speaker 1: some of the folks involved here. This is going to

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Speaker 1: be a little different than usual because we have no

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Speaker 1: human cast, but we do have there are were ultimately

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Speaker 1: a lot of humans involved in this. We're not going

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Speaker 1: to highlight all of them, but credited as the director

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Speaker 1: and as an editor on this film is Michael Boydstone.

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Speaker 1: The same year, he had also worked with musician Pete

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Speaker 1: Bardens I believe of Camel Fame on a project called Watercolors.

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Speaker 1: I wasn't able to find streaming content of this, but

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Speaker 1: it apparently combined footage of running water from Yellowstone with

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Speaker 1: Pete Barden's music. Boydston would go on to work with

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Speaker 1: Thomas Dolby on nineteen ninety four's The Gate to the

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Speaker 1: Mind's Eye, which he also directed, and he also worked

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Speaker 1: on a project called Televoid in ninety seven, which I'm

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Speaker 1: not saying I think it's an unrelated project that does

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Speaker 1: similar things like using different different computer animated shorts and

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Speaker 1: sort of stitching them together into 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 1: I don't think he did. I'd have to know. There

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Speaker 1: are different people involved in these. Different people did the music,

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Speaker 1: Like Thomas Dolby again was on The Gate to the

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Speaker 1: Mind's Eye, but he Boydsten went on to work on

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Speaker 1: a number of educational programs, including at least one episode

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Speaker 1: of Bill Ny The Science Guy, as well as a

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Speaker 1: series called diz Kids, and he served as a cinematographer

379
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Speaker 1: on various TV and film projects, including the twenty sixteen

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Speaker 1: film Beta Test starring Manu Bennett. And I wasn't able

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Speaker 1: to find much else about his role in this production

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00:22:05,520 --> 00:22:07,840
Speaker 1: and how it went down. So I was looking around

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Speaker 1: and I found his contact information. I reached out to

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Speaker 1: him and I was like, Hey, can we ask you

385
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Speaker 1: a few questions about Beyond the Mind's Eye? And he

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Speaker 1: said he said, sure, it feels like several lifetimes ago,

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Speaker 1: but I'd be up for that. So we sent him

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Speaker 1: some questions. As of this recording time, we have not

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Speaker 1: heard back from him, but if we hear back from

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Speaker 1: him before publication, we'll tack it on at the end

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Speaker 1: of this episode, and if he gets back to us

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Speaker 1: after the episode has published, well, then we'll include it

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Speaker 1: in a future listener mail segment. I can't wait to

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Speaker 1: know more, all right, we already mentioned John Hamer born

395
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Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight Czech American musician, composer and record producer

396
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Speaker 1: again best known for his tracks Miami Vice Theme and

397
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Speaker 1: Crockett's Theme, both from the nineteen eighty series Miami Vice. Again.

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Speaker 1: Crockett's theme especially is just incredible. That's when you just

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Speaker 1: need a You've probably heard it before, but if you have,

400
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Speaker 1: go listen to it. Tremendous track. He won two Grammy

401
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Speaker 1: Awards for the Miami Vice theme song. His other scores

402
00:23:06,840 --> 00:23:09,800
Speaker 1: include two episodes of Tales from the Crypt, Night Rider

403
00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:13,360
Speaker 1: two thousand, nineteen ninety six is Beastmaster three, The Eye

404
00:23:13,400 --> 00:23:16,760
Speaker 1: of Braccus, and of course that nineteen ninety Dolph Lugran

405
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Speaker 1: film I Come In Pecak Dark Angel, which we previously

406
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Speaker 1: discussed on Weird House Cinema.

407
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Speaker 3: Before recording this episode, we were both watching a news

408
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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, and before the interview began,

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

411
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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 1: I've seen it referred to as a signature model link keyboard,

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Speaker 1: and maybe our synth junkies can chime in more on that,

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Speaker 1: but I've read that one of the things about him

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Speaker 1: is the e He's very much a keyboard synth guy,

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Speaker 1: and he developed in augmented a way so that he

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Speaker 1: could jam out on a keyboard like it was a guitar,

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Speaker 1: like with the energy of rocking out to a guitar,

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Speaker 1: and as someone who cannot rock out on a keyboard

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Speaker 1: or a guitar, I can't really speak to the differences there. Joe,

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Speaker 1: you have guitar experience, maybe you can tell us what

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Speaker 1: 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

427
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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. I

429
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Speaker 3: guess you can sort of dance while playing a keyboard.

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

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Speaker 3: the keyboard, so I don't I don't know. Yeah, you

432
00:24:40,880 --> 00:24:43,159
Speaker 3: can't run around with a keyboard unless you turn it

433
00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:46,000
Speaker 3: into a strap on keyboard like dress like this thing

434
00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:47,679
Speaker 3: that I'm tempted to call a guitar.

435
00:24:48,280 --> 00:24:51,679
Speaker 1: I guess, like thinking of clips, I've seen of spirited

436
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:54,720
Speaker 1: guitar players and spirited keyboard players, because there are some

437
00:24:54,800 --> 00:24:58,440
Speaker 1: very spirited keyboard players, you know what I mean. There's

438
00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:01,000
Speaker 1: a different type of rocking that it can occur I

439
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:03,520
Speaker 1: guess you can if you're like really rocking out on

440
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:07,320
Speaker 1: the scnth of the keyboard, like you're still localized to

441
00:25:07,520 --> 00:25:10,880
Speaker 1: that machine. You can't like run the stage or anything, so.

442
00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:13,560
Speaker 3: Right, you can kind of headbang, I guess while you're playing,

443
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:17,000
Speaker 3: But yeah, your feet need to stay roughly where they

444
00:25:17,040 --> 00:25:18,760
Speaker 3: are now.

445
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:22,840
Speaker 1: Johonhamer's music is widely available on music streaming platforms, and

446
00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:26,080
Speaker 1: that includes Beyond the Mind's Eye as an album. You

447
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:28,520
Speaker 1: can listen to it on you know, Apple Music, Spotify,

448
00:25:28,560 --> 00:25:31,120
Speaker 1: wherever you get your digital music. He has a lot

449
00:25:31,119 --> 00:25:32,760
Speaker 1: of other tracks. I was going through some of his

450
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:36,359
Speaker 1: other albums and taking him in. There's a nineteen seventy

451
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:39,159
Speaker 1: five album of his title The First Seven Days, and

452
00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:42,919
Speaker 1: there's a track on there titled Light Slash Sun, and

453
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:45,680
Speaker 1: I thought it was very good, all right. The producer

454
00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:48,639
Speaker 1: of Beyond the Mind's Eye was Stephen Churchill born nineteen

455
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:52,159
Speaker 1: fifty seven. He produced I believe all of the Mind's

456
00:25:52,160 --> 00:25:55,320
Speaker 1: Eye videos, beginning with nineteen nineties The Mind's Eye, followed

457
00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:58,200
Speaker 1: by this film, and then ninety four is the Gate

458
00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:00,679
Speaker 1: to the Mind's Eye, ninety six is End of the

459
00:26:00,680 --> 00:26:05,200
Speaker 1: Mind's Eye, ninety seven's Computer Animation Showcase, nineteen ninety eight's

460
00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:09,560
Speaker 1: Ancient Alien and nineteen ninety eight's Computer Animation Celebration. I

461
00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:12,840
Speaker 1: don't know why the t the title breakdown seems too much.

462
00:26:12,880 --> 00:26:15,560
Speaker 1: At this point, we're no longer talking about the Mind's Eye.

463
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:19,119
Speaker 1: He previously worked as an animator on Disney's The Black

464
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:22,400
Speaker 1: Cauldron in nineteen eighty five. He was a character designer

465
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: on The Great Mouse Detective in eighty six, a background

466
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:27,640
Speaker 1: artist on Oliver and Company in eighty eight, and an

467
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:30,680
Speaker 1: in between artist on The Little Mermaid in nineteen eighty nine.

468
00:26:30,960 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 3: I remember The Great Mate, he was a character designer.

469
00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:36,440
Speaker 3: The Great Mouse Detective had some extremely scary characters when

470
00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:39,480
Speaker 3: I was little, at least I remember I rented that one,

471
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:42,080
Speaker 3: and there's this bat with sharp teeth on it that

472
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:46,600
Speaker 3: freaked me out. Also, it has a rat villain voiced

473
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:49,280
Speaker 3: by Vincent Price, I think, who gets very scary at

474
00:26:49,280 --> 00:26:49,640
Speaker 3: the end.

475
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:53,280
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that is definitely a Vincent Price role,

476
00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:55,720
Speaker 1: and he is quite good. I'm trying to remember who

477
00:26:56,080 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: voiced the bat. Nobody ever heard of Candy Kendi, not

478
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 1: a I believe he was a radio performer and voice actor,

479
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:06,920
Speaker 1: but I don't have a lot of familiarity with his work.

480
00:27:07,520 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 3: Well, the two villainous rodents in this movie were they

481
00:27:10,840 --> 00:27:14,480
Speaker 3: both freaked me out when I was young, so maybe

482
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:15,240
Speaker 3: he designed them.

483
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:17,760
Speaker 1: And then bone was Sherlock Holmes in that?

484
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:18,680
Speaker 3: Oh really?

485
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:19,679
Speaker 1: Yeah?

486
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 3: Oh wait, but Sherlock Holmes is just like the human

487
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:25,720
Speaker 3: who happens to live in the room above the Basle,

488
00:27:25,800 --> 00:27:26,920
Speaker 3: the Great mouse Detective.

489
00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:29,200
Speaker 1: I think you're right. It's been a long time since

490
00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 1: I've seen it.

491
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:32,399
Speaker 3: Like, it's not primarily an adventure about Sherlock Holmes. It

492
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:35,480
Speaker 3: is about his mouse equivalent to Basle though whatever.

493
00:27:35,880 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Black Cauldron is when I've been tempted to revisit,

494
00:27:39,280 --> 00:27:41,680
Speaker 1: but I have not yet gotten around to it. It's

495
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:44,400
Speaker 1: got some great dark fantasy elements to it, but it's

496
00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:47,879
Speaker 1: not one that I think was well regarded at the

497
00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:49,800
Speaker 1: time of its release, and I don't know if people

498
00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 1: have warmed up to it or not now. Obviously, this

499
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:57,640
Speaker 1: project encompasses the computer effects work of various individuals, and

500
00:27:57,680 --> 00:27:59,160
Speaker 1: again we're not going to be able to have time

501
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:01,960
Speaker 1: to really do us just to everyone, but we'll reference

502
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 1: some of them as they come up. I know that

503
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 1: in the movie databases, the flora section is credited to

504
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:12,919
Speaker 1: yo Chiro Kawaguchi, and Journey to the Fourth Dimension is

505
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:16,200
Speaker 1: credited to Rick Harper and David Thornton. But of course

506
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:18,520
Speaker 1: that is just that. That's just some of the people

507
00:28:18,560 --> 00:28:20,159
Speaker 1: involved in this, and there are many others.

508
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:23,280
Speaker 3: Now, as we said earlier, the movie is sort of

509
00:28:23,880 --> 00:28:26,679
Speaker 3: you could kind of think of it as like just

510
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:30,600
Speaker 3: a series of music videos. That's a little misleading because

511
00:28:30,640 --> 00:28:34,520
Speaker 3: there they do kind of have a narrative flow in

512
00:28:34,560 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 3: a way, but they are a it's a series of

513
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:42,200
Speaker 3: discrete musical numbers on the soundtrack that are each paired

514
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 3: with an animation sequence that may be sort of one

515
00:28:46,080 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 3: continuous theme throughout or might just be just a Shmorgas

516
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 3: board of imagery.

517
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:53,920
Speaker 1: That's right. And you know, the interesting thing is, like

518
00:28:53,960 --> 00:28:57,880
Speaker 1: any anthology, we kind of have a host. Yeah, we

519
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:00,680
Speaker 1: have we have something or someone that is going to

520
00:29:00,720 --> 00:29:03,440
Speaker 1: introduce us to the concept of beyond the mind's eye.

521
00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:07,360
Speaker 3: We get a floating virtual bald head with these you know,

522
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:11,520
Speaker 3: polygons on its surface. It almost looks I don't know

523
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:13,280
Speaker 3: if you caught the same thing. Maybe I'm out of

524
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:14,960
Speaker 3: my mind here, but it looks almost kind of like

525
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:16,720
Speaker 3: a floating Jeff bezos Head.

526
00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:22,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's a little bit of bezos to it. Yeah, yeah,

527
00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:24,160
Speaker 1: I think that's a strong comparison.

528
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:28,280
Speaker 3: Anyway, the bezos head tells us you are now entering

529
00:29:28,320 --> 00:29:32,560
Speaker 3: a world inside the essence of your imagination, look within

530
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 3: your dreams. They can take you beyond the mind's eye.

531
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:41,600
Speaker 3: And then we begin to zoom. We begin to zoom

532
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:46,640
Speaker 3: through just a tunnel of textures and colors and things

533
00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 3: start to pop out at us. And it is a

534
00:29:49,800 --> 00:29:54,040
Speaker 3: fairly overwhelming experience. At first. You're just like plunging down

535
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:58,760
Speaker 3: this tunnel into darkness with colors emerging from out of everywhere,

536
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:00,480
Speaker 3: and you don't even know what you're lo looking at,

537
00:30:00,760 --> 00:30:02,720
Speaker 3: and you can't quite make sense of it. And by

538
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 3: the time you sort of focus on one shape and image,

539
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:10,000
Speaker 3: it's turning into something else. And I can see why

540
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 3: they put this animated segment first, because even in retrospect,

541
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:15,800
Speaker 3: it kind of takes your breath away. And I'm sure

542
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:18,880
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety two you'd just be like, Wow, I

543
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:22,080
Speaker 3: can't even begin to describe what I'm looking at.

544
00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, because especially if you're watching this on VHS, you

545
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:27,560
Speaker 1: can't just skip to the next chapter. You'd have to

546
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:30,520
Speaker 1: fast forward through stuff, and so it really needs to

547
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 1: hit hard immediately, and it does just lots of shifting

548
00:30:33,920 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 1: psychedelic CGI landscapes, fractals and particles, virtual reality bodies, including

549
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 1: a pair of lovers who merge in their love making

550
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:48,200
Speaker 1: into a single extra dimensional dragonfly. And then there's a butterfly,

551
00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:53,680
Speaker 1: a bird, a terasaur, a haunted castle, an electric vortex,

552
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:56,280
Speaker 1: and then finally like a reading rainbow butterfly.

553
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 3: I love when it turns into the Haunted Castle because

554
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:01,800
Speaker 3: that has nothing to do with anything that came before.

555
00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:04,960
Speaker 3: But suddenly we're in spirit Halloween and this is just

556
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:08,800
Speaker 3: an animated castle. It's a whoo and bats flying through

557
00:31:08,800 --> 00:31:11,600
Speaker 3: the sky. But then when we get close to the bats,

558
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 3: we realize they're not bats. They're terosaurs with devil tongues.

559
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:19,360
Speaker 3: And one of the terosaurs crashes into the quote camera

560
00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 3: and breaks the glass of the lens, sort of just

561
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:27,360
Speaker 3: spiderwebs of fracture across the screen, and then the does

562
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:30,560
Speaker 3: the terra stor kind of like slide down like a

563
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 3: it does like a bug smeared on a windshield.

564
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:37,840
Speaker 1: So, on one hand, this whole intro bit feels very demo,

565
00:31:38,160 --> 00:31:40,280
Speaker 1: you know, it feels it feels like they're saying someone

566
00:31:40,360 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 1: is saying, look what CGI can do for you. But

567
00:31:43,720 --> 00:31:48,080
Speaker 1: on the other hand, we are definitely seeing parts of

568
00:31:48,120 --> 00:31:52,640
Speaker 1: a sequence from the nineteen ninety two film The lawnmower Man. This,

569
00:31:52,760 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 1: of course, was a science fiction horror movie directed by

570
00:31:57,200 --> 00:32:01,520
Speaker 1: Brett Leonard and originally sort of kind of based on

571
00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:04,120
Speaker 1: a Stephen King's story, but I believe he was able

572
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:06,200
Speaker 1: to get his name taken off of that. The original

573
00:32:06,280 --> 00:32:09,600
Speaker 1: lawnmower Man short story is very creepy, but has nothing

574
00:32:09,640 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 1: to do with virtual reality or computers.

575
00:32:12,440 --> 00:32:14,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've looked at this up before. I think the

576
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:17,880
Speaker 3: movie has nothing to do with this story except that

577
00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:20,520
Speaker 3: there is a guy who operates a lawnmower. That's it.

578
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:23,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so there's a scene I had to go.

579
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:26,600
Speaker 1: I was able to find this online included a link

580
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 1: for here, Jove you wanted to check it out. But

581
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 1: there's a sequence in The lawnmower Man where the character

582
00:32:33,440 --> 00:32:39,000
Speaker 1: job Smith played by Jeff Fay, he invites his girlfriend

583
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:43,080
Speaker 1: Marnie Burke played by Jenny Wright, to hey, come join

584
00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:46,280
Speaker 1: me in the cyber realm for some of the cyber sex.

585
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 1: And so they're in these you know, virtual reality harnesses

586
00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 1: and then we see in the virtual realm they are

587
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:56,720
Speaker 1: these two lovers that you know, embrace each other and

588
00:32:56,760 --> 00:32:59,560
Speaker 1: then they sort of like merge with each other, become

589
00:32:59,600 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 1: a drag and fly. But in the lawnmower man, this

590
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:06,600
Speaker 1: sequence takes a dark turn. She like gets stuck in

591
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:10,280
Speaker 1: the like the ground or something, and then she starts

592
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:13,720
Speaker 1: freaking out and he turns into a monster and eats her.

593
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:17,400
Speaker 1: So we do not see anybody turn into a monster

594
00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:19,960
Speaker 1: and beyond the mind's eye because obviously that doesn't fit

595
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:22,280
Speaker 1: the vibe here. This is not This is not about

596
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:25,680
Speaker 1: feeling anxious about technology. This isn't about being afraid that

597
00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 1: technology is going to eat you. This is about what

598
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 1: technology can transform you into. And it's not a monster.

599
00:33:33,040 --> 00:33:34,600
Speaker 1: It is you know, the eternity.

600
00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:38,080
Speaker 3: Well, but we do go from the cybersex to the

601
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:42,000
Speaker 3: haunted castle. But it's I guess nothing bad appears to

602
00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:44,600
Speaker 3: happen to the to the two lovers on the screen.

603
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 3: It's just like we're looking at something else now and

604
00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 3: it is a haunted castle.

605
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, that haunted castle looks inviting, though it's like it's

606
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:53,080
Speaker 1: like you said, spirit Halloween can territory it's like, don't

607
00:33:53,080 --> 00:33:54,600
Speaker 1: you want to go over there and meet the fun

608
00:33:54,680 --> 00:33:55,760
Speaker 1: vampires that live there?

609
00:33:55,840 --> 00:33:58,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's castle they give out the full sized candy

610
00:33:58,800 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 3: bars exactly.

611
00:34:00,440 --> 00:34:04,280
Speaker 1: Now. Multiple individuals and I believe studios worked on the

612
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:09,360
Speaker 1: CGI sequences for The lawnmower Man, but they include let's see,

613
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:12,160
Speaker 1: there's a Gimmel Everett who lived nineteen fifty one through

614
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:16,160
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, who also worked on ninety five Virtuosity and

615
00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:18,520
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

616
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:22,800
Speaker 3: The Virtuosity is the movie with a virtual reality character

617
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:26,240
Speaker 3: played by Russell Crowe who is a virtual serial killer

618
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:29,480
Speaker 3: who comes into the real world. And the main thing

619
00:34:29,520 --> 00:34:31,480
Speaker 3: I remember about it is that the trailer for the

620
00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:34,240
Speaker 3: movie had Russell Crowe walking through a mall while playing

621
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 3: Stay in Alive.

622
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:38,839
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think they basically they three D print him

623
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:41,920
Speaker 1: and he's a carbon based organism with blue blood or

624
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:42,680
Speaker 1: something like that.

625
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:45,719
Speaker 3: It's reverse tron that is the situation.

626
00:34:46,200 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, sounds like a great idea. I think I saw

627
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:52,640
Speaker 1: it back in the day and I remember enjoying it.

628
00:34:52,680 --> 00:34:56,840
Speaker 1: But let's see, we also have Helene Plotkin, who also

629
00:34:56,880 --> 00:35:00,000
Speaker 1: worked on something that she's credited for ninety ninety one

630
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:02,960
Speaker 1: Liquid Television, Liquid Television. That was a similar situation where

631
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:07,360
Speaker 1: they're bringing in different short films and other short projects.

632
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:10,640
Speaker 1: And then she also was involved in nineteen ninety nine's

633
00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:14,800
Speaker 1: Toy Story two. And then there's Brett Leonard born nineteen

634
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:17,960
Speaker 1: fifty nine, who also worked on Virtuosity and Killer Clowns

635
00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:20,920
Speaker 1: from Outer Space. He also directed the music video for

636
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:23,839
Speaker 1: Peter Gabriel's Kiss That Frog in two thousand and four,

637
00:35:24,320 --> 00:35:28,000
Speaker 1: which I had great track, amazing album, big fan of us.

638
00:35:28,520 --> 00:35:31,759
Speaker 1: The other interesting thing about Brett Leonard, who again it's

639
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:35,759
Speaker 1: some connection to this film, is that he directed the

640
00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:39,240
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine film The Dead Pit, a horror movie

641
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:42,720
Speaker 1: that is best known to VHS fans for its box

642
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:47,279
Speaker 1: VHS box with the light up eyes. So look up

643
00:35:47,320 --> 00:35:49,000
Speaker 1: an image of this. If you ever went into a

644
00:35:49,080 --> 00:35:52,239
Speaker 1: VHS rental store back in the day, you inevitably saw this,

645
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:55,040
Speaker 1: and if the people running the place remember to refresh

646
00:35:55,080 --> 00:35:57,920
Speaker 1: its batteries, it's the eyes on the front of the

647
00:35:58,000 --> 00:35:59,799
Speaker 1: VHS box would light up.

648
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 3: That's a really good gimmick. I you know, I feel

649
00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:06,400
Speaker 3: I was a connoisseur of VHS boxes in the nineties

650
00:36:06,440 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 3: in the video store and I don't remember.

651
00:36:08,160 --> 00:36:10,680
Speaker 1: This, Yeah, I mean it's not a I don't think.

652
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about the film itself, and I

653
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:14,880
Speaker 1: never rented it. How could I. I was a child

654
00:36:14,920 --> 00:36:19,040
Speaker 1: and this was scary, But you know it's I've seen

655
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:22,960
Speaker 1: it for sale and you know, prize by collectors. So anyway,

656
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:25,640
Speaker 1: those are just some of the folks that were connected

657
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:29,239
Speaker 1: to these sequences from the lawnmower Man, which have been

658
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 1: repurposed here in Beyond the Mind's Eye. And this won't

659
00:36:32,600 --> 00:36:34,840
Speaker 1: be the last time we see lawnmower Man footage in

660
00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:35,880
Speaker 1: this this feature.

661
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:39,680
Speaker 3: Okay, well, that's just the introductory segment. We cannot speak

662
00:36:39,680 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 3: at great length about all of the segments in the movie,

663
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 3: but we'll try to talk about at least most of

664
00:36:44,200 --> 00:36:46,480
Speaker 3: them for a bit. The second one I thought was

665
00:36:46,520 --> 00:36:50,439
Speaker 3: also pretty interesting. This one is called Seeds, and it's

666
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:54,400
Speaker 3: an animation on the concept of pan spermia, with like

667
00:36:54,560 --> 00:36:56,719
Speaker 3: a nut or a thing that looks kind of like

668
00:36:56,760 --> 00:37:02,080
Speaker 3: a pumpkin seed flying through space and then landing on Earth.

669
00:37:02,120 --> 00:37:03,640
Speaker 3: I don't know why I said a pumpkin seed, because

670
00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:05,279
Speaker 3: it doesn't look like a pumpkin seed. It's some other

671
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:06,839
Speaker 3: kind of seed. I don't know what seed.

672
00:37:06,880 --> 00:37:09,120
Speaker 1: Would you compare it to rob It's just a big

673
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:09,920
Speaker 1: old space seed.

674
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:12,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, caraway seed or something. It's a

675
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:15,480
Speaker 3: big old seed. It flies through space and then it

676
00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:19,440
Speaker 3: plunks down on Earth, and then it gives rise to

677
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:22,480
Speaker 3: life on Earth, and we see all kinds of just

678
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:25,880
Speaker 3: kind of you know, life dancing about. We see trees

679
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:30,799
Speaker 3: as groovy shape shifting dancing machines. Like the trees to

680
00:37:30,920 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 3: the beat of the song, they shift and transform into

681
00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:38,520
Speaker 3: different kinds of trees with different arrangements of branches and leaves,

682
00:37:38,920 --> 00:37:41,320
Speaker 3: which again goes back to this morphing concept that we

683
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:44,879
Speaker 3: see throughout this whole thing. So there's all these kinds

684
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:48,640
Speaker 3: of different representations of life growing and morphing and shifting

685
00:37:48,680 --> 00:37:51,759
Speaker 3: and taking these different forms. And then eventually there are

686
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:55,239
Speaker 3: these pods, these plants that grow as pods that end

687
00:37:55,320 --> 00:37:58,719
Speaker 3: up shooting seeds back out into space. So it's as

688
00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:00,280
Speaker 3: if the cycle continues.

689
00:38:00,680 --> 00:38:04,240
Speaker 1: Yeah. Apparently this sequence uses imagery created by computer graphics

690
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:07,680
Speaker 1: artists and researcher Carl Simms born nineteen sixty two from

691
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:12,520
Speaker 1: his nineteen ninety short Panspermia. He incidentally served as a

692
00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:16,760
Speaker 1: producer on the first minds Ie release, and this footage

693
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:19,960
Speaker 1: would later be used in the Boydsten directed music video

694
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:24,560
Speaker 1: for Pantera's cover of the Black Sabbath instrumental Planet Caravan,

695
00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:26,759
Speaker 1: and you can also find this on YouTube.

696
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:30,680
Speaker 3: I love Sabbath, I like that song. I did listen

697
00:38:30,719 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 3: and watch this, and I don't love the pinter cover.

698
00:38:37,360 --> 00:38:40,640
Speaker 1: I have to say this whole Panspermia section, I felt

699
00:38:40,680 --> 00:38:43,600
Speaker 1: like this one felt perhaps more dated by today's standards

700
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 1: than the intro, perhaps because a lot of it hinges

701
00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:51,080
Speaker 1: on depictions of natural world organisms like actual plants, actual animals.

702
00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:54,680
Speaker 1: And again, what it accomplishes for nineteen ninety or nineteen

703
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: ninety two is amazing, but I don't know. On top

704
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:04,160
Speaker 1: of that, it's not my favorite Hommer track beyond the

705
00:39:04,160 --> 00:39:07,520
Speaker 1: Mind's Eye. But things do pick up again when we

706
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:10,640
Speaker 1: get back into the depictions of actual alien pant sperma

707
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:13,880
Speaker 1: with the Big Seed launching cannon plants and so forth.

708
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:25,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay. The next segment I thought was interesting

709
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:31,800
Speaker 3: because it's called Afternoon Adventure, and this track incorporates both

710
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:37,000
Speaker 3: live action and computer animation, and it over lays one

711
00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 3: on top of the other, so we get shots at

712
00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:42,200
Speaker 3: least that's what I think is going on. I don't

713
00:39:42,239 --> 00:39:46,680
Speaker 3: think that's cgi. It couldn't be. No, it is. It seems.

714
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:49,400
Speaker 3: For example, we get a footage of a real forest

715
00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:52,799
Speaker 3: that is overlaid with animated insects, and we see a

716
00:39:52,960 --> 00:39:56,440
Speaker 3: wasp chasing a bee. And what I love is that

717
00:39:56,880 --> 00:39:59,959
Speaker 3: the on Hommer track that is paired with this sound

718
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 3: like chase music from an action film in the eighties

719
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:05,840
Speaker 3: or like from Miami Vice. It's like sick, you know,

720
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 3: like guitar shredding kind of chase music.

721
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:11,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like like that bee just robbed a bank

722
00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:12,920
Speaker 1: and the wasp is on the case.

723
00:40:13,160 --> 00:40:17,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, wasp, you're a loose cannon. But this has a

724
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 3: kind of twist ending actually, So at the you know,

725
00:40:21,239 --> 00:40:22,480
Speaker 3: we go around and we see a lot of the

726
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:25,719
Speaker 3: landscape and we end up zooming out in this one,

727
00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:27,799
Speaker 3: and we zoom out and out and out, and we

728
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:29,840
Speaker 3: go up in the sky and see this whole you know,

729
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:32,560
Speaker 3: the contours of the earth and the lakes and the

730
00:40:32,640 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 3: rivers and the hills, and we keep zooming out until

731
00:40:36,600 --> 00:40:40,160
Speaker 3: we go through a glass barrier and we realized the

732
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 3: landscape where we were watching these insects interact was inside

733
00:40:45,160 --> 00:40:49,800
Speaker 3: of a dome, a dome in space on the surface

734
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:53,680
Speaker 3: of a barren moon, and there are many domes like it.

735
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 1: What this is great though, because yeah, it starts off

736
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:01,560
Speaker 1: seeming like yeah, bulge choice to feature both live action

737
00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:05,120
Speaker 1: and computer generated bugs, especially since you know you really

738
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:09,879
Speaker 1: can't create a photorealistic bug at this point. But yeah,

739
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:12,160
Speaker 1: by the time you get to the domes, amazing. This

740
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:15,800
Speaker 1: is exactly what you want out of your CGI imagery

741
00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:18,680
Speaker 1: at this point in time. Let us depict other worlds,

742
00:41:18,760 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 1: let us depict you know, the future, show us give

743
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 1: us this revelation, and it does.

744
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:27,680
Speaker 3: Now. The next segment I think, is called Brave New World.

745
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:32,360
Speaker 3: It is sort of a representation of the insides of

746
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:36,920
Speaker 3: a computer, but rendered in a in a dramatic, almost

747
00:41:36,920 --> 00:41:40,160
Speaker 3: heroic fashion, And as I was watching it, it actually

748
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:44,160
Speaker 3: looked quite familiar to me, and I started thinking, wait

749
00:41:44,200 --> 00:41:47,479
Speaker 3: a minute, is this footage that was created for those

750
00:41:47,560 --> 00:41:50,000
Speaker 3: Intel Pennium commercials in the nineties.

751
00:41:50,680 --> 00:41:52,720
Speaker 1: It might have been. I was looking around for an example,

752
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:57,279
Speaker 1: and I kept running across other Intel commercials, so I'm

753
00:41:57,320 --> 00:41:59,959
Speaker 1: not sure about that. But yeah, we get dancing flow

754
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:04,719
Speaker 1: vating silver squares, and then we enter various geometric shapes

755
00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:09,160
Speaker 1: a real kaleidoscope experience, and the track here from Jon

756
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:11,320
Speaker 1: Hammer is very soothing. But then it picks up the

757
00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:13,800
Speaker 1: pace as we sail through the insides of a computer

758
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:18,000
Speaker 1: and this is where we get into familiar process or

759
00:42:18,120 --> 00:42:22,960
Speaker 1: commercial territory. Eventually, a golden titan rises from the computer

760
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:25,960
Speaker 1: realm to lift up a giant gear and oh, we

761
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:28,880
Speaker 1: realized this titan is Atlas. And I'm not sure I

762
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:32,799
Speaker 1: love the idea of computer technology as a shackled, eternally

763
00:42:32,880 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 1: punished titan. I don't know exactly what we're trying to

764
00:42:37,120 --> 00:42:37,719
Speaker 1: portray there.

765
00:42:38,200 --> 00:42:40,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, whether it's the Greek themes, or it's going in

766
00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 3: a different direction with some kind of I don't know,

767
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:46,279
Speaker 3: inn Rand meditation. In any case, this one doesn't hit

768
00:42:46,360 --> 00:42:47,000
Speaker 3: so great for me.

769
00:42:47,400 --> 00:42:50,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the titan looks cool, I will say that.

770
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's see. After this, there's a segment called I

771
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:57,560
Speaker 3: think Transformers. This one really looks like a video game,

772
00:42:58,120 --> 00:43:01,520
Speaker 3: and I think that's because in heart it is reproducing

773
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:05,200
Speaker 3: footage from the lawnmower Man of a video game they

774
00:43:05,239 --> 00:43:08,080
Speaker 3: play in the lawnmower Man. And then also I think

775
00:43:08,080 --> 00:43:10,560
Speaker 3: we actually just straight up see the job. A character

776
00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:11,680
Speaker 3: from lawnmower Man.

777
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:14,880
Speaker 1: In this we do like the raging virtual job where he's.

778
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 3: Like a yeah, he's mad.

779
00:43:17,520 --> 00:43:20,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then there's I haven't seen The lawnmower Man

780
00:43:20,400 --> 00:43:22,080
Speaker 1: in a while. I didn't didn't have time to watch

781
00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:24,480
Speaker 1: it in full for this, but yeah, there's a sequence

782
00:43:24,480 --> 00:43:26,720
Speaker 1: in lawnmower Man where they're at an arcade. They're playing

783
00:43:26,719 --> 00:43:29,080
Speaker 1: some sort of like a racing game, and we see

784
00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:31,640
Speaker 1: the virtual footage from that part of the film here.

785
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:35,399
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, the racing part being it's people zoomings through

786
00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:38,200
Speaker 3: a kind of corridor with these closing teeth that you

787
00:43:38,239 --> 00:43:40,240
Speaker 3: have to kind of navigate through gaps in.

788
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:44,399
Speaker 1: This reminds me there was there was a video game

789
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:48,839
Speaker 1: tie into The lawnmower Man and my video my video

790
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:51,319
Speaker 1: game capabilities at the time were very limited. I think

791
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:53,919
Speaker 1: I had a Sega Genesis and they put this game

792
00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:57,680
Speaker 1: out on Sega Genesis, and I remember wanting it because basically,

793
00:43:57,719 --> 00:44:02,920
Speaker 1: with the limited capacity of the Sega Genesis, they were

794
00:44:02,960 --> 00:44:07,239
Speaker 1: able to create some sort of virtual sections, you know,

795
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:09,720
Speaker 1: where you're like flying around in a three dimensional space,

796
00:44:11,040 --> 00:44:13,680
Speaker 1: something that you know, by today's standards is just old hat,

797
00:44:13,960 --> 00:44:17,280
Speaker 1: but at the time, on Genesis like it was like, whoa,

798
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:20,719
Speaker 1: you can do things like that on this machine. I

799
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:23,000
Speaker 1: want in, even though I don't know how I feel

800
00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:26,000
Speaker 1: about that movie. I want to play the game. And

801
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:27,759
Speaker 1: to be clear, I think other parts of the game

802
00:44:27,760 --> 00:44:30,879
Speaker 1: are just typical side scrolling. But they had some sort

803
00:44:30,920 --> 00:44:34,440
Speaker 1: of a gimmicked sort of virtual reality section.

804
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:38,280
Speaker 3: Okay, oh but wait a minute. This one's called Transformers

805
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:40,719
Speaker 3: and there's something like a Transformer in it.

806
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:44,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we do get We do get some sort

807
00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 1: of a laser night that's chasing around a transformer, like

808
00:44:48,719 --> 00:44:51,560
Speaker 1: a robot that changes into a race car. I don't

809
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:54,400
Speaker 1: know if this is an actual transformer or a gobot

810
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:58,680
Speaker 1: or just a general riff on the overall concept, but

811
00:44:59,000 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 1: there it is.

812
00:45:00,560 --> 00:45:03,960
Speaker 3: Man. So the next segment is one that really was

813
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:07,279
Speaker 3: a hit for me. It's probably the cheesiest segment, or

814
00:45:07,280 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 3: one of the cheesiest in it, but I loved it,

815
00:45:09,800 --> 00:45:13,520
Speaker 3: especially because of how catchy the music is. This is

816
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 3: the one called Too Far, which has more different imagery

817
00:45:17,920 --> 00:45:21,520
Speaker 3: in it than I can possibly recount here. But it's

818
00:45:21,560 --> 00:45:25,800
Speaker 3: got what these sort of jazz design robots playing drums

819
00:45:25,840 --> 00:45:29,480
Speaker 3: on a crumbling planet surface with desolate gray buildings. What

820
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:34,040
Speaker 3: a weird juxtaposition. So it's like a a gray post

821
00:45:34,080 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 3: apocalyptic world with ruined buildings, but these happy robots made

822
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:41,560
Speaker 3: of these kind of jazz squiggles are all like, oh boy,

823
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 3: I'm feeling the feeling the groove.

824
00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:46,280
Speaker 1: It's like you had a monkey's paw and you wished

825
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:51,680
Speaker 1: that windows clip art became like syndient. You know, we're

826
00:45:51,719 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 1: not clip art really. What's his name, the paper Clippy Clippy.

827
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:58,760
Speaker 1: It's like Clippy and his like demonic kin were brought

828
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:01,359
Speaker 1: to life and they're here to rock out, at least

829
00:46:01,400 --> 00:46:03,759
Speaker 1: in theory, but you know it's gonna get violent.

830
00:46:04,120 --> 00:46:10,560
Speaker 3: Clip multicolored Clippy family reunion and they're all playing hand drums. Yeah.

831
00:46:10,600 --> 00:46:13,760
Speaker 3: But then it's not just that. There's also an angry

832
00:46:13,800 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 3: looking like hamhead guy sitting watching a TV and a

833
00:46:17,760 --> 00:46:21,000
Speaker 3: necktie and he keeps kind of burping and his head

834
00:46:21,040 --> 00:46:23,640
Speaker 3: comes off and then it sinks down into his neck

835
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:26,680
Speaker 3: and then it pops off again, and he's watching things

836
00:46:26,719 --> 00:46:29,040
Speaker 3: on TV. And we see what he's watching on the TV,

837
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:33,200
Speaker 3: which is I think robots on roller coasters. And then

838
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:37,279
Speaker 3: there's there's more TV watching themes with something that's just

839
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:40,399
Speaker 3: a straight up eyeball watching a TV but then it

840
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:42,720
Speaker 3: gets scared and it hides behind the couch.

841
00:46:43,280 --> 00:46:46,439
Speaker 1: Ah. You know. The roller coaster, the virtual roller coaster thing,

842
00:46:46,520 --> 00:46:49,200
Speaker 1: of course, has never gotten old like that basically spawned

843
00:46:49,600 --> 00:46:53,320
Speaker 1: a whole video game franchise, and I think Regal Cinema

844
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:55,680
Speaker 1: still rolls that out at the beginning of their Seeing

845
00:46:55,680 --> 00:46:57,680
Speaker 1: a picture in Regal Cinema. Right, you get to ride

846
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:00,840
Speaker 1: that virtual roller coaster a little bit. Some people like

847
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: will put their hands up to get into it.

848
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:04,560
Speaker 3: You know, I'll do that.

849
00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 1: Oh.

850
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:10,040
Speaker 3: And then so this musical number has some vocals in it.

851
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:13,560
Speaker 3: Vocals are not super prominent in the music throughout this

852
00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 3: but a couple of tracks have vocals.

853
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:16,960
Speaker 1: Uh.

854
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:20,439
Speaker 3: And the only lyrics you get in this song, which

855
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 3: again the segment is called too Far. We see these

856
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:26,399
Speaker 3: sort of these these three singers with big hair, all

857
00:47:26,440 --> 00:47:29,120
Speaker 3: three of them. It's CGI singers. Of course. I don't

858
00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:31,319
Speaker 3: know if I needed to say that, but yes, these

859
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:35,600
Speaker 3: sort of sort of CGI mannequin figures with huge hair,

860
00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 3: and they're singing too far, take it easy, It's all right?

861
00:47:41,840 --> 00:47:46,120
Speaker 3: What are those three phrases? How do they interlock? Too far?

862
00:47:46,400 --> 00:47:47,799
Speaker 3: Take it easy, It's all right?

863
00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:51,920
Speaker 1: It's like what the stages of grief or something right, okay.

864
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:55,680
Speaker 3: Oh, and then there's like a whole eyeball family. Remember

865
00:47:55,719 --> 00:47:58,080
Speaker 3: there was an eyeball earlier that was watching the TV.

866
00:47:58,600 --> 00:48:01,600
Speaker 3: Uh Nick got scared. But now there's a whole family

867
00:48:01,640 --> 00:48:04,480
Speaker 3: of eyeballs. It's like a mommy and daddy eyeball. And

868
00:48:04,480 --> 00:48:06,400
Speaker 3: then I'm a lot of little eyeballs and they're all

869
00:48:06,440 --> 00:48:09,960
Speaker 3: watching the TV and they're watching a robot on TV

870
00:48:10,120 --> 00:48:12,759
Speaker 3: tell us that we've gone too far. And then my

871
00:48:12,880 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 3: favorite part of the whole thing is we see this

872
00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:19,040
Speaker 3: assembly line inside of a factory that makes terminators. They're

873
00:48:19,080 --> 00:48:22,680
Speaker 3: just making terminator exoskeletons, good, pumping out T eight hundreds.

874
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:28,360
Speaker 3: And then they produce a canned beverage called Too Far Juice.

875
00:48:31,600 --> 00:48:35,360
Speaker 3: Funny tie in here. I just on a lark. I

876
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:37,520
Speaker 3: don't know why it even occurred to me to do this.

877
00:48:37,640 --> 00:48:40,120
Speaker 3: I was like, wonder if there's anything in reality called

878
00:48:40,160 --> 00:48:43,000
Speaker 3: Too Far Juice? And I googled it and there is

879
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:48,000
Speaker 3: a brewery based in Minnesota called the Fair State Brewing

880
00:48:48,080 --> 00:48:51,440
Speaker 3: Cooperative that has I've never had a beer from them,

881
00:48:51,440 --> 00:48:53,319
Speaker 3: so I don't know anything about them except they have

882
00:48:53,400 --> 00:48:56,759
Speaker 3: a beer called Too Far juice, and I compared it.

883
00:48:56,840 --> 00:49:00,000
Speaker 3: The can design looks exactly like this can in beyond

884
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:02,799
Speaker 3: on the mind's eyes. So that is a deep reference

885
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:05,120
Speaker 3: for a brewery to make. I don't know how that happened.

886
00:49:05,480 --> 00:49:07,839
Speaker 1: I think it's just because of just all the beer

887
00:49:07,880 --> 00:49:10,319
Speaker 1: out there. I'm not really a beer enthusiast, but I

888
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:14,439
Speaker 1: love seeing the variety. There's so many different beers. There's

889
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:18,600
Speaker 1: so many different like cool names for beers, and you

890
00:49:18,920 --> 00:49:22,720
Speaker 1: even see cool stuff like the waylan Utani beer. Aspen

891
00:49:22,800 --> 00:49:28,000
Speaker 1: beer was finally brought into reality recently as a promotion

892
00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:31,880
Speaker 1: for Alien Romulus by Angel City Brewery. You could finally

893
00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:34,200
Speaker 1: get a can of the beer that they're drinking on

894
00:49:34,239 --> 00:49:37,520
Speaker 1: the Nostromo in the original nineteen seventy nine Alien film.

895
00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:39,040
Speaker 3: It's very safe to drink.

896
00:49:40,880 --> 00:49:44,240
Speaker 1: But yeah, this does seem like a much deeper cut.

897
00:49:44,480 --> 00:49:47,879
Speaker 1: Too Far Juice seems seems that maybe a bit too far.

898
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:49,680
Speaker 1: I don't know how many people who drank it really

899
00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:52,359
Speaker 1: caught the reference, but you know, tip of the hat

900
00:49:52,360 --> 00:49:53,279
Speaker 1: to those that did.

901
00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:56,279
Speaker 3: If I'm ever visiting Minnesota, I'm gonna have to get

902
00:49:56,320 --> 00:49:57,600
Speaker 3: me a Too Far Juice.

903
00:49:58,000 --> 00:50:00,839
Speaker 1: Well, this whole segment here of on the mind's eye.

904
00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:03,759
Speaker 1: This one really made me want my MTV. This felt very,

905
00:50:04,480 --> 00:50:08,719
Speaker 1: very in line with the Dire Straits video Yes for

906
00:50:08,800 --> 00:50:12,439
Speaker 1: Money for Nothing. Yeah, so that's the vibe I got here.

907
00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:16,920
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah. Let's see now there are still more segments

908
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:19,080
Speaker 3: to talk about. There's one called Windows that's kind of

909
00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:21,839
Speaker 3: a change of pace, because this one is fairly melancholy,

910
00:50:22,080 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 3: like most of the others are I don't know, the

911
00:50:25,120 --> 00:50:27,040
Speaker 3: others are jaunty here, they're you know, more of a

912
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:31,680
Speaker 3: kind of a spirit of fun or excitement. This one

913
00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:34,840
Speaker 3: is a little bit down tempo and a little bit sad.

914
00:50:34,960 --> 00:50:38,120
Speaker 3: And we see a room full of paintings and wine

915
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:41,080
Speaker 3: bottles and a loot, and then the loot floats off

916
00:50:41,120 --> 00:50:43,400
Speaker 3: of the wall and then everything starts floating in the

917
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:46,719
Speaker 3: air and flying around, and there's a guitar solo, and

918
00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:50,560
Speaker 3: it ends sort of with classic classical two D paintings

919
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:55,520
Speaker 3: like van Goff's self portrait peeling out into three dimensions.

920
00:50:55,280 --> 00:50:57,200
Speaker 1: And this effect is pretty cool. I thought this held

921
00:50:57,239 --> 00:51:00,239
Speaker 1: up pretty good. It doesn't feel as dated as because

922
00:51:00,239 --> 00:51:02,840
Speaker 1: a lot of things inherently feel dated in this picture.

923
00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:06,760
Speaker 1: And I like the music here, especially the early goings

924
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:09,160
Speaker 1: of it. Are very chill, very gentle. The gentle yng

925
00:51:09,239 --> 00:51:10,520
Speaker 1: Hummer agree.

926
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:14,160
Speaker 3: Now the gentle themes continue because the next segment is

927
00:51:14,239 --> 00:51:17,160
Speaker 3: quite tender. It's like a love story, and it actually

928
00:51:17,200 --> 00:51:20,839
Speaker 3: has dialogue. We didn't have that since the intro. So

929
00:51:20,920 --> 00:51:23,600
Speaker 3: the music here it's called nothing but Love, and it

930
00:51:23,600 --> 00:51:26,520
Speaker 3: sounds kind of like soft acoustic guitar. We meet two

931
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:30,920
Speaker 3: different characters named Lata and Arturo, and we see a

932
00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:34,319
Speaker 3: note on the wall that says, Lota, happy birthday, see

933
00:51:34,360 --> 00:51:39,000
Speaker 3: you at seven, virtually yours Arturo. So I guess these

934
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:44,360
Speaker 3: are characters that know they are they're self consciously virtual characters,

935
00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:49,440
Speaker 3: but they're both sort of red tinted CGI bodies. Arturo

936
00:51:49,880 --> 00:51:53,200
Speaker 3: comes in and meets Lata, and then he offers her

937
00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:56,320
Speaker 3: a magic checkered cube kind of like a Rubik's cube

938
00:51:56,680 --> 00:52:00,200
Speaker 3: that turns into a flying liquid metal snake, and then

939
00:52:00,200 --> 00:52:04,080
Speaker 3: a lot of turns old and looks mad, and then

940
00:52:04,080 --> 00:52:07,480
Speaker 3: we get dialogue and she says, I don't want your sculptures.

941
00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:11,200
Speaker 3: I love you, and then they kiss and then they

942
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:14,560
Speaker 3: twirl and then they melt together as liquid metal.

943
00:52:15,280 --> 00:52:18,080
Speaker 1: That's what love in the virtual realm consists of. I

944
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:19,600
Speaker 1: guess we have kind of this is like an Adam

945
00:52:19,600 --> 00:52:22,080
Speaker 1: and Eve sort of thing, right is the red sculpture

946
00:52:22,120 --> 00:52:25,520
Speaker 1: and apple the snake self explanatory.

947
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:29,440
Speaker 3: Okay, I didn't think about that. The next one is great.

948
00:52:29,520 --> 00:52:32,400
Speaker 3: It's called Pyramid. I loved this one. It's got some

949
00:52:32,560 --> 00:52:36,680
Speaker 3: interesting kind of flute sounds. It sounds almost kind of

950
00:52:36,680 --> 00:52:39,560
Speaker 3: South American or something. And then it's got like a

951
00:52:39,640 --> 00:52:45,040
Speaker 3: dog chasing butterflies, these strange marionette gods dancing on top

952
00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:47,960
Speaker 3: of a pyramid with a yellow, flaming sky. This is

953
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:51,120
Speaker 3: the one that's got a lady with like leopard print

954
00:52:51,160 --> 00:52:54,080
Speaker 3: on her flesh. At one point she says, we are

955
00:52:54,239 --> 00:52:55,239
Speaker 3: of the butterfly.

956
00:52:56,080 --> 00:52:58,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's inherently trippy and cryptic. But the

957
00:52:59,120 --> 00:53:02,560
Speaker 1: dancing god or statues or whatever they are, these were monstrous,

958
00:53:03,680 --> 00:53:07,680
Speaker 1: but in the sense too that like they're moving in

959
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:12,680
Speaker 1: a way that maybe trying to pattern like human dance movements,

960
00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:15,520
Speaker 1: but it just feels very clunky and inhuman. But I

961
00:53:15,560 --> 00:53:17,440
Speaker 1: don't know that kind of works. If these are gods,

962
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:20,960
Speaker 1: why not. They're not of our world, And generally I

963
00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:25,759
Speaker 1: like the other worldliness of this section. You know, strange pyramids,

964
00:53:26,120 --> 00:53:30,879
Speaker 1: weird gods, talking leopard ladies, I'm all for it.

965
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:33,560
Speaker 3: You know. I've got a real beef with Beyond the

966
00:53:33,600 --> 00:53:36,080
Speaker 3: Mind side, though, which is that up to this point

967
00:53:36,120 --> 00:53:39,960
Speaker 3: there have been not nearly enough human bodies with horse heads.

968
00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:44,000
Speaker 3: They're about to do me right here. So Theater of

969
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:47,080
Speaker 3: Magic is the next segment. It's got everything you want.

970
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:50,799
Speaker 3: It's got mirrors with masks flying around inside them. It's

971
00:53:50,800 --> 00:53:53,680
Speaker 3: got a theater lobby staircase. So it's like that animation

972
00:53:53,760 --> 00:53:55,640
Speaker 3: at the movie theater where you go out of the

973
00:53:55,760 --> 00:53:57,680
Speaker 3: It shows you going out of the theater and out

974
00:53:57,719 --> 00:53:59,920
Speaker 3: the staircase, down the staircase to the lobby to get

975
00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:03,279
Speaker 3: some refreshments. Here it's the opposite. You're going up the

976
00:54:03,320 --> 00:54:06,920
Speaker 3: staircase in the lobby. And then we see a marble

977
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:09,960
Speaker 3: statue of a man playing an obo at a marble

978
00:54:10,080 --> 00:54:13,720
Speaker 3: lion which comes to life on an alien planet, jumps

979
00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:16,680
Speaker 3: over a flaming brazier, goes into a maze, and then

980
00:54:16,719 --> 00:54:19,880
Speaker 3: we see a volcano explode and this turns into a

981
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:22,000
Speaker 3: metallic woman with a horse head.

982
00:54:23,880 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I love this. I love the creatures, the

983
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:31,759
Speaker 1: weird landscapes, the virtual reality zooms, the labyrinth, that volcano

984
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:34,560
Speaker 1: spewing dianetics everywhere, great stuff.

985
00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:38,319
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Oh, and this is the one that's got

986
00:54:38,320 --> 00:54:40,799
Speaker 3: the eyeball metronomes. At one point, we're just on a

987
00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:44,799
Speaker 3: planet surface and they're metronomes ticking everywhere, and they've got

988
00:54:44,840 --> 00:54:48,359
Speaker 3: eyeballs at the top of the ticker whatever you call that,

989
00:54:48,520 --> 00:54:51,440
Speaker 3: the I don't know what it's called, the part that

990
00:54:51,480 --> 00:54:54,360
Speaker 3: ticks on a metronome. It's like Easter Island, but with

991
00:54:54,440 --> 00:54:55,480
Speaker 3: eyeball metronomes.

992
00:54:56,120 --> 00:54:56,239
Speaker 1: Uh.

993
00:54:56,440 --> 00:55:00,439
Speaker 3: And then we see a Golden War galley rowing into Spain. Hey.

994
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:03,480
Speaker 3: Connecting to recent episodes, this is a Was this a triream?

995
00:55:03,480 --> 00:55:05,360
Speaker 3: I don't think so. It just looks like one level

996
00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:05,840
Speaker 3: of oars.

997
00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:09,239
Speaker 1: To me, this looked like, yeah, we have elements of

998
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:13,520
Speaker 1: sort of fantasy Viking here. We Yeah, this is take

999
00:55:13,560 --> 00:55:15,880
Speaker 1: it for what it is. It's a crazy space galley

1000
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:17,200
Speaker 1: and it is amazing.

1001
00:55:17,480 --> 00:55:19,799
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so we also in this one gets some

1002
00:55:20,120 --> 00:55:23,719
Speaker 3: mixing of live action shots of locations and models, like

1003
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:27,120
Speaker 3: a room and a house with CGI and then a

1004
00:55:27,239 --> 00:55:31,319
Speaker 3: landscape with green clouds and lightning. I recall this one

1005
00:55:31,360 --> 00:55:32,520
Speaker 3: kind of ends abruptly.

1006
00:55:33,520 --> 00:55:36,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, some of them do. Like, Okay, we've said

1007
00:55:36,560 --> 00:55:38,279
Speaker 1: all we can say about this move on to the

1008
00:55:38,280 --> 00:55:38,680
Speaker 1: next one.

1009
00:55:38,760 --> 00:55:41,960
Speaker 3: That sort of thing. Okay, very last segment. This one

1010
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:45,279
Speaker 3: starts with space imagery. It depicts a quasar, like a

1011
00:55:45,400 --> 00:55:49,280
Speaker 3: rotating black hole, surrounded by this big disc of orange dust,

1012
00:55:49,680 --> 00:55:52,799
Speaker 3: the jets coming out the poles. We see a sea

1013
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 3: scape and there is a mermaid with one of those

1014
00:55:56,040 --> 00:55:59,760
Speaker 3: seashell bras and she I noticed this about the mermaid.

1015
00:55:59,800 --> 00:56:04,160
Speaker 3: She's hinges like her tail like hinges or fishtail does,

1016
00:56:04,480 --> 00:56:06,600
Speaker 3: which made me think she's supposed to be not an

1017
00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:09,640
Speaker 3: organic mermaid but a toy come.

1018
00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:10,880
Speaker 1: To life, I guess, so.

1019
00:56:11,200 --> 00:56:14,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, But in any case, she flies into the sky

1020
00:56:15,360 --> 00:56:18,840
Speaker 3: and then we get a trio of naked male figures

1021
00:56:18,880 --> 00:56:22,800
Speaker 3: without faces, so the interior of the skull is just smooth,

1022
00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:27,600
Speaker 3: and they start folding upon themselves and into each other,

1023
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:32,600
Speaker 3: and it becomes just this kaleidoscopic exercise of folding and

1024
00:56:32,680 --> 00:56:36,000
Speaker 3: mixing and blending these naked male forms altogether.

1025
00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:39,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one's pretty cool. You could imagine this playing

1026
00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:42,120
Speaker 1: on the big screen behind you know, your favorite prog

1027
00:56:42,239 --> 00:56:43,200
Speaker 1: rock band or something.

1028
00:56:43,480 --> 00:56:45,839
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then we go to credits, which there are

1029
00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:46,359
Speaker 3: a lot of.

1030
00:56:46,600 --> 00:56:49,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a solid ten minutes of credits. Like

1031
00:56:49,560 --> 00:56:52,720
Speaker 1: I was expecting at least five more minutes of computer

1032
00:56:52,960 --> 00:56:57,080
Speaker 1: animated mayhem, but no, just ten minutes of credits. But

1033
00:56:57,520 --> 00:57:00,000
Speaker 1: that also means ten more minutes of Yon Hamer music

1034
00:57:00,480 --> 00:57:03,560
Speaker 1: and it's pretty good. And yeah, to their credit, they

1035
00:57:03,640 --> 00:57:07,799
Speaker 1: do shout out seemingly everybody involved in the creation of

1036
00:57:07,840 --> 00:57:11,000
Speaker 1: these images. So yeah, well worth a look.

1037
00:57:19,640 --> 00:57:22,400
Speaker 3: All right, So we've done a basic outline of the

1038
00:57:22,480 --> 00:57:25,360
Speaker 3: content of Beyond the Mind's Eye. But I was so

1039
00:57:25,400 --> 00:57:28,240
Speaker 3: curious about why this movie feels so I don't know,

1040
00:57:28,360 --> 00:57:32,120
Speaker 3: potent with meaning and historical significance, and so I thought

1041
00:57:32,120 --> 00:57:34,680
Speaker 3: we might analyze it a little bit here or see

1042
00:57:34,720 --> 00:57:37,520
Speaker 3: what we can come up with at least. And one

1043
00:57:38,520 --> 00:57:41,680
Speaker 3: way of thinking about it that was sticking in my

1044
00:57:41,800 --> 00:57:45,400
Speaker 3: mind is that, you know, I'm pretty strongly persuaded by

1045
00:57:45,520 --> 00:57:48,400
Speaker 3: medium is the message kind of analysis. In other words,

1046
00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:52,440
Speaker 3: I think a lot of times the practical functional characteristics

1047
00:57:52,640 --> 00:57:56,760
Speaker 3: of a medium of information delivery often influence our thinking

1048
00:57:56,840 --> 00:57:59,880
Speaker 3: about the world more powerfully than the content of the

1049
00:58:00,160 --> 00:58:04,440
Speaker 3: information delivered. So a classic example of this kind of thinking,

1050
00:58:05,160 --> 00:58:07,160
Speaker 3: I've mentioned this on the show before is the kind

1051
00:58:07,160 --> 00:58:11,880
Speaker 3: of Neil Postman idea that the invention of television had

1052
00:58:11,880 --> 00:58:15,560
Speaker 3: a powerful influence on culture because the format of TV

1053
00:58:16,320 --> 00:58:21,120
Speaker 3: puts a primary emphasis on the entertainment value of information.

1054
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:25,400
Speaker 3: So what's important is the ability of something to grab

1055
00:58:25,520 --> 00:58:29,200
Speaker 3: and hold on to your visual attention, So that when

1056
00:58:29,360 --> 00:58:33,200
Speaker 3: printed news shifted to TV news, you also get a

1057
00:58:33,440 --> 00:58:36,920
Speaker 3: shift in our fundamental concept of news worthiness that what

1058
00:58:37,040 --> 00:58:41,800
Speaker 3: was newsworthy became more likely to be synonymous with what's

1059
00:58:41,880 --> 00:58:45,880
Speaker 3: most entertaining or attention holding, et cetera. So, thinking with

1060
00:58:45,920 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 3: that kind of analysis, I started to wonder, what, if anything,

1061
00:58:49,680 --> 00:58:53,120
Speaker 3: are the distinct messages that are hidden in the medium

1062
00:58:53,360 --> 00:58:57,600
Speaker 3: of computer animation, as distinct from the medium of live

1063
00:58:57,640 --> 00:59:01,840
Speaker 3: action film or from traditional anima. One of the things

1064
00:59:01,880 --> 00:59:05,320
Speaker 3: that absolutely stood out to me about it is that

1065
00:59:05,360 --> 00:59:10,560
Speaker 3: there is an incredibly strong theme of absorption running throughout.

1066
00:59:11,280 --> 00:59:14,200
Speaker 3: It is hard to watch beyond the mind's eye and

1067
00:59:14,280 --> 00:59:18,160
Speaker 3: not come away thinking that your essence will somehow be

1068
00:59:18,440 --> 00:59:23,320
Speaker 3: absorbed and subsumed into a kind of metallic goop out

1069
00:59:23,360 --> 00:59:26,560
Speaker 3: of which infinite other forms will be assembled and then

1070
00:59:26,680 --> 00:59:31,600
Speaker 3: liquidated once again. So you are not necessarily discreet. You

1071
00:59:31,680 --> 00:59:35,640
Speaker 3: are a quantity of moldable material, which can be both

1072
00:59:35,720 --> 00:59:38,440
Speaker 3: frightening and exciting. The kind of friendly version of this

1073
00:59:38,560 --> 00:59:43,640
Speaker 3: idea is oneness with the universe, but the more threatening

1074
00:59:43,760 --> 00:59:45,960
Speaker 3: version is just that kind of like you are raw

1075
00:59:46,040 --> 00:59:50,000
Speaker 3: material that something or someone could turn into anything.

1076
00:59:50,720 --> 00:59:54,120
Speaker 1: This reminds me of stuff we've discussed in the show

1077
00:59:54,120 --> 00:59:58,760
Speaker 1: before concerning the ideas of Jaron Laniar that you know

1078
00:59:58,960 --> 01:00:00,920
Speaker 1: when it comes to social media, and that is that

1079
01:00:00,960 --> 01:00:03,479
Speaker 1: you are not the user. You are the product. You're

1080
01:00:03,480 --> 01:00:07,600
Speaker 1: a part of this grand thing, but you're not playing

1081
01:00:07,640 --> 01:00:10,720
Speaker 1: the role in it that you thought you were. So

1082
01:00:12,120 --> 01:00:15,360
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's certainly worth thinking about. But I agree

1083
01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:19,080
Speaker 1: there is a tangible desire that is evident in this

1084
01:00:19,200 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 1: film that, like, you want to be absorbed by a

1085
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:26,560
Speaker 1: comforting digital world. You know, a strong sense of technological

1086
01:00:26,560 --> 01:00:30,840
Speaker 1: optimism along those lines where about where computer culture is headed,

1087
01:00:30,960 --> 01:00:34,120
Speaker 1: where it can take you, and it doesn't entertain the

1088
01:00:34,160 --> 01:00:37,960
Speaker 1: possibility that CGI technology will eat us, even though again

1089
01:00:38,320 --> 01:00:40,760
Speaker 1: that's definitely a part of the lawnmower Man sequences that

1090
01:00:40,800 --> 01:00:43,800
Speaker 1: were cut out for Beyond the Mind's Eye.

1091
01:00:44,080 --> 01:00:46,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, there's a fine line between being absorbed and

1092
01:00:46,920 --> 01:00:51,600
Speaker 3: being eaten. I guess. I mean the absorption themes are

1093
01:00:51,640 --> 01:00:55,000
Speaker 3: more they feel more wholesome and inviting. It's just kind

1094
01:00:55,000 --> 01:00:56,520
Speaker 3: of like, yeah, you're going to become a part of

1095
01:00:56,560 --> 01:00:59,680
Speaker 3: it all, and then all of that will become many

1096
01:00:59,720 --> 01:01:00,440
Speaker 3: other things.

1097
01:01:00,760 --> 01:01:03,320
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting that like kind of ties into some

1098
01:01:03,400 --> 01:01:05,920
Speaker 1: aspects of the psychedelic experience, which of course, you know,

1099
01:01:05,960 --> 01:01:09,920
Speaker 1: differs from person to person. But you know, this idea

1100
01:01:10,040 --> 01:01:13,160
Speaker 1: of interconnectedness, realizing that you're all part of like one people,

1101
01:01:13,920 --> 01:01:17,640
Speaker 1: one planet. You know that all these interpersonal connections are

1102
01:01:17,640 --> 01:01:21,360
Speaker 1: the most valuable things in your life. And there's this idea, Okay,

1103
01:01:21,400 --> 01:01:23,760
Speaker 1: well maybe the future is going to be a technological

1104
01:01:23,840 --> 01:01:26,720
Speaker 1: version of that, and it sort of is, but it

1105
01:01:26,720 --> 01:01:29,640
Speaker 1: also sort of isn't, or it can be that with

1106
01:01:29,720 --> 01:01:33,800
Speaker 1: a more negative air to it. You know, it's I

1107
01:01:33,800 --> 01:01:38,200
Speaker 1: guess the reality of something is always like maybe not,

1108
01:01:38,480 --> 01:01:42,320
Speaker 1: you know, a complete divorce from the initial optimism. But

1109
01:01:42,440 --> 01:01:44,000
Speaker 1: there are other dimensions to it as well.

1110
01:01:44,200 --> 01:01:47,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can absolutely see that. Man. One thing I

1111
01:01:47,840 --> 01:01:50,320
Speaker 3: really think about that stands out in all this early

1112
01:01:50,360 --> 01:01:56,560
Speaker 3: CGI is the strong communicated idea that the essence of

1113
01:01:56,720 --> 01:02:01,880
Speaker 3: all reality is essentially geometric, that the underlying structure of

1114
01:02:01,960 --> 01:02:06,080
Speaker 3: planets and trees and human beings and music and love

1115
01:02:06,360 --> 01:02:12,120
Speaker 3: and starlight is polyhedrons. And I don't know exactly, like

1116
01:02:12,360 --> 01:02:15,400
Speaker 3: if you sort of take on that feeling, how that

1117
01:02:15,520 --> 01:02:18,840
Speaker 3: cashes out into values or other beliefs about the world.

1118
01:02:19,240 --> 01:02:21,920
Speaker 3: But it is hard to deny that that is a

1119
01:02:22,000 --> 01:02:26,520
Speaker 3: feeling created by watching this stuff. Everything turns into a

1120
01:02:26,640 --> 01:02:31,360
Speaker 3: series of intersecting angles and lines, and that can create

1121
01:02:31,400 --> 01:02:35,600
Speaker 3: a very elegant feeling, a kind of mathematical beauty and

1122
01:02:35,800 --> 01:02:39,120
Speaker 3: a sense of symmetry in all that. Like the idea

1123
01:02:39,240 --> 01:02:42,480
Speaker 3: that the world is reducible to geometry can be a

1124
01:02:42,520 --> 01:02:44,920
Speaker 3: beautiful and romantic way to think about things. And it's

1125
01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:48,080
Speaker 3: also like the functional power of math kind of leads

1126
01:02:48,080 --> 01:02:50,959
Speaker 3: you to think that, Like I don't know, just thinking

1127
01:02:51,000 --> 01:02:54,560
Speaker 3: of everything as geometry and math to be manipulated means

1128
01:02:54,640 --> 01:02:59,080
Speaker 3: that like almost anything is possible in reality. But yeah,

1129
01:02:59,280 --> 01:03:02,360
Speaker 3: I'm not sure exactly where all that goes, But there's

1130
01:03:02,480 --> 01:03:06,240
Speaker 3: a geometric brain mindset that really gets into you from

1131
01:03:06,320 --> 01:03:07,600
Speaker 3: watching all of this animation.

1132
01:03:08,320 --> 01:03:10,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's like everything is coming out of

1133
01:03:10,800 --> 01:03:13,440
Speaker 1: an order, an order that is understood that is literally

1134
01:03:13,480 --> 01:03:17,480
Speaker 1: programmed by human beings, like almost like we're recreating reality,

1135
01:03:17,520 --> 01:03:20,760
Speaker 1: but it's a reality that makes sense and is understandable

1136
01:03:20,840 --> 01:03:21,840
Speaker 1: and we have.

1137
01:03:21,880 --> 01:03:24,880
Speaker 3: Full control over Yeah, Yeah, which.

1138
01:03:24,680 --> 01:03:27,160
Speaker 1: I guess that's one of the advantages of one of

1139
01:03:27,200 --> 01:03:30,200
Speaker 1: the attractions of various like virtual worlds, right, it is

1140
01:03:30,280 --> 01:03:34,520
Speaker 1: like a limited version of the real world that we

1141
01:03:34,640 --> 01:03:37,320
Speaker 1: have more control over and we know the limits of.

1142
01:03:38,360 --> 01:03:42,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of our level of control, another thing I

1143
01:03:42,400 --> 01:03:45,840
Speaker 3: was thinking about with Beyond the Mind's Eye and zooming

1144
01:03:45,880 --> 01:03:49,200
Speaker 3: out to the broader issue of CGI as a medium,

1145
01:03:49,240 --> 01:03:52,320
Speaker 3: what is the message of the CGI medium? I was

1146
01:03:52,360 --> 01:03:56,560
Speaker 3: really thinking about the idea of a moving perspective. So

1147
01:03:57,000 --> 01:04:01,920
Speaker 3: in live action and traditional animation, we sometimes have a

1148
01:04:02,000 --> 01:04:05,880
Speaker 3: camera or a perspective that moves through the space that

1149
01:04:05,880 --> 01:04:09,120
Speaker 3: we're looking at. But more often, i'd say, at least

1150
01:04:09,120 --> 01:04:11,520
Speaker 3: half the time, you have a static camera or a

1151
01:04:11,720 --> 01:04:17,200
Speaker 3: static perspective with moving subjects. So usually when you're watching

1152
01:04:17,240 --> 01:04:20,680
Speaker 3: other types of media, you are holding still and the

1153
01:04:20,720 --> 01:04:23,600
Speaker 3: subject of the shot is what's in motion. Again, that's changes.

1154
01:04:23,640 --> 01:04:25,560
Speaker 3: You know, there are dolly shots, and there are moving

1155
01:04:25,600 --> 01:04:28,000
Speaker 3: cameras in film and all that. It happens sometimes, but

1156
01:04:28,160 --> 01:04:31,840
Speaker 3: more often you're used to being in one place and

1157
01:04:31,960 --> 01:04:36,560
Speaker 3: watching the subject move. When I think about early computer animation,

1158
01:04:37,600 --> 01:04:40,440
Speaker 3: it seems to me that the quote camera, though of

1159
01:04:40,480 --> 01:04:43,640
Speaker 3: course there is no camera, it's just the selected viewpoint

1160
01:04:43,680 --> 01:04:46,000
Speaker 3: within the three D space. As the frames are rendered,

1161
01:04:46,320 --> 01:04:50,800
Speaker 3: it feels like that camera almost never stops moving, and

1162
01:04:50,840 --> 01:04:54,080
Speaker 3: in beyond the mind's eye, it's almost constantly in motion.

1163
01:04:54,640 --> 01:04:57,640
Speaker 3: And that motion means we are, without our say so,

1164
01:04:58,240 --> 01:05:01,880
Speaker 3: being just pulled into scenes and images as with a

1165
01:05:02,000 --> 01:05:05,440
Speaker 3: tractor beam. So the very first animated segment of this

1166
01:05:05,520 --> 01:05:08,720
Speaker 3: movie has the viewer plunging through a tunnel of lights.

1167
01:05:09,280 --> 01:05:11,760
Speaker 3: And you know, remember what the head tells you at

1168
01:05:11,800 --> 01:05:15,480
Speaker 3: the beginning, Actually it says you are now entering a

1169
01:05:15,600 --> 01:05:19,800
Speaker 3: world inside the essence of your imagination. Look within your dreams.

1170
01:05:20,120 --> 01:05:23,480
Speaker 3: They can take you beyond the mind's eyes. So I

1171
01:05:23,520 --> 01:05:27,440
Speaker 3: think it's it's not a coincidence that this early CGI

1172
01:05:27,520 --> 01:05:30,720
Speaker 3: showcase would use this kind of language of being literally

1173
01:05:30,840 --> 01:05:35,320
Speaker 3: taken somewhere. By looking, you are agreeing to be taken somewhere.

1174
01:05:36,120 --> 01:05:38,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, enter into the world of dream. I mean

1175
01:05:38,560 --> 01:05:40,200
Speaker 1: that lines up with what I was saying earlier about

1176
01:05:40,960 --> 01:05:46,840
Speaker 1: more recent AI generated images, that they seem like the

1177
01:05:46,880 --> 01:05:49,240
Speaker 1: product of dream. They seem like a dream that you

1178
01:05:49,360 --> 01:05:52,680
Speaker 1: have partially forgotten, and that's part of the appeal of it,

1179
01:05:52,680 --> 01:05:54,919
Speaker 1: And that's I feel like that's definitely the case here

1180
01:05:55,360 --> 01:05:59,120
Speaker 1: in the early nineties with this footage in particular. Also,

1181
01:05:59,280 --> 01:06:01,680
Speaker 1: again it fits with the subject matter like it's not

1182
01:06:01,720 --> 01:06:05,800
Speaker 1: really there's not really a narrative. It's very abstract. The

1183
01:06:05,880 --> 01:06:11,400
Speaker 1: meaning is entirely open to your interpretation for the most part. Yeah,

1184
01:06:10,760 --> 01:06:14,000
Speaker 1: it's it's a trip, as Roger Ebert.

1185
01:06:13,760 --> 01:06:18,160
Speaker 3: Said, Yeah, exactly. And the constant motion of the viewpoint

1186
01:06:18,240 --> 01:06:20,720
Speaker 3: of the perspective or the camera makes it feel like

1187
01:06:20,760 --> 01:06:24,000
Speaker 3: it's literally a trip. You are constantly being sucked into

1188
01:06:24,120 --> 01:06:27,480
Speaker 3: new places and physically made to look at new things

1189
01:06:27,520 --> 01:06:29,760
Speaker 3: as opposed to being where you are and having things

1190
01:06:29,760 --> 01:06:32,200
Speaker 3: happen in front of you. Now, what does that kind

1191
01:06:32,200 --> 01:06:35,240
Speaker 3: of message cash out to. I don't know, I feel

1192
01:06:35,240 --> 01:06:38,280
Speaker 3: like it kind of It kind of ties into another

1193
01:06:38,640 --> 01:06:40,880
Speaker 3: line and a song in there, the too Far Take

1194
01:06:40,960 --> 01:06:43,640
Speaker 3: it Easy, It's all right. It's almost like, you know,

1195
01:06:43,840 --> 01:06:46,640
Speaker 3: this new world of technology is going to take you

1196
01:06:46,760 --> 01:06:51,320
Speaker 3: places without asking you. It's going to overwhelm you and

1197
01:06:51,480 --> 01:06:54,280
Speaker 3: just take you there. And now you're looking at this

1198
01:06:54,440 --> 01:06:56,680
Speaker 3: and you might not even comprehend or be able to

1199
01:06:56,680 --> 01:06:59,880
Speaker 3: control what it is you're seeing now, but just relax

1200
01:07:00,160 --> 01:07:02,600
Speaker 3: and surrender. It'll be okay.

1201
01:07:03,880 --> 01:07:07,760
Speaker 1: Say yes to the lawnmower. Man. Yeah, it weirdly has

1202
01:07:07,800 --> 01:07:11,520
Speaker 1: me wanting to rewatch The lawnmower Man or lawnmower Man Too,

1203
01:07:11,680 --> 01:07:14,600
Speaker 1: Job's War or whatever other title it had.

1204
01:07:14,920 --> 01:07:16,439
Speaker 3: You know, I haven't seen them in a long time.

1205
01:07:16,480 --> 01:07:18,680
Speaker 3: I would want to watch them for the animated scenes,

1206
01:07:18,720 --> 01:07:21,880
Speaker 3: But what I recall is that the human plot and

1207
01:07:21,920 --> 01:07:23,880
Speaker 3: all that is just kind of unpleasant.

1208
01:07:24,840 --> 01:07:28,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, likely, so likely so, but who knows, It's been

1209
01:07:28,320 --> 01:07:32,440
Speaker 1: a while. Nobody eats yard clippings though, Like that was

1210
01:07:32,680 --> 01:07:34,520
Speaker 1: the c one of the creepiest things about the original

1211
01:07:34,600 --> 01:07:35,160
Speaker 1: King Store.

1212
01:07:35,560 --> 01:07:38,120
Speaker 3: Well, if the animator merges your form into that of

1213
01:07:38,120 --> 01:07:41,480
Speaker 3: a sheep, you might you know, this is liable to

1214
01:07:41,480 --> 01:07:43,720
Speaker 3: happen to all of us because our again, our forms

1215
01:07:43,720 --> 01:07:47,360
Speaker 3: are not fixed where we can morphit any moment. Oh

1216
01:07:47,400 --> 01:07:49,520
Speaker 3: and that sort of ties into just one last thing

1217
01:07:49,520 --> 01:07:53,120
Speaker 3: I wanted to mention I thought was interesting about trends

1218
01:07:53,160 --> 01:07:56,800
Speaker 3: in early CGI. Did you also notice a visual theme

1219
01:07:57,000 --> 01:08:01,479
Speaker 3: that things are the same at every gale, That there's

1220
01:08:01,560 --> 01:08:05,400
Speaker 3: like all this zooming in and out and going out

1221
01:08:05,440 --> 01:08:08,480
Speaker 3: into space and seeing planets and stars and quasars and

1222
01:08:08,520 --> 01:08:10,480
Speaker 3: galaxies and all that, and then you zoom in and

1223
01:08:10,520 --> 01:08:14,840
Speaker 3: see microscopic mechanisms and cells in a bloodstream, and circuit boards,

1224
01:08:15,400 --> 01:08:19,479
Speaker 3: circuit boards represented as cities with skyscrapers and stuff, and

1225
01:08:19,560 --> 01:08:22,960
Speaker 3: so there's this It seemed to me there's this repeated

1226
01:08:23,040 --> 01:08:26,400
Speaker 3: theme throughout a lot of early CGI, and it's here

1227
01:08:26,400 --> 01:08:29,680
Speaker 3: in this movie too, of a kind of scale agnosticism,

1228
01:08:29,800 --> 01:08:34,880
Speaker 3: that what exists at one level of resolution is reproduced

1229
01:08:34,920 --> 01:08:37,439
Speaker 3: at greater levels of resolution. So the more you zoom

1230
01:08:37,439 --> 01:08:39,599
Speaker 3: in or the more you zoom out, you just keep

1231
01:08:39,640 --> 01:08:41,200
Speaker 3: seeing the same patterns.

1232
01:08:41,880 --> 01:08:45,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, as we inevitably like

1233
01:08:45,240 --> 01:08:50,160
Speaker 1: zoom in and out of these imagined micro and macro worlds.

1234
01:08:50,479 --> 01:08:52,639
Speaker 3: The message of that is you got to put computers

1235
01:08:52,680 --> 01:08:54,840
Speaker 3: inside your body. It's time to be a cyborg.

1236
01:08:56,040 --> 01:08:58,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess. I mean that's part of the that's

1237
01:08:58,280 --> 01:09:00,960
Speaker 1: kind of wrapped up in the optimism too. Will become machines,

1238
01:09:01,000 --> 01:09:07,160
Speaker 1: will become this synthesis of biology and technology, and it's

1239
01:09:07,240 --> 01:09:11,000
Speaker 1: just gonna make everything smoother and cooler and shinier.

1240
01:09:11,479 --> 01:09:14,040
Speaker 3: I can't wait to be t one thousand coup.

1241
01:09:14,280 --> 01:09:18,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, everything is crow all right. Well, there you have

1242
01:09:18,520 --> 01:09:21,599
Speaker 1: it beyond the mind's eye. I don't know if I'm

1243
01:09:21,640 --> 01:09:25,920
Speaker 1: gonna keep exploring the other films in this franchise, it

1244
01:09:25,920 --> 01:09:29,080
Speaker 1: seems like somebody should put out a big, thick, blu

1245
01:09:29,200 --> 01:09:31,519
Speaker 1: ray set like of all of them. Surely that's in

1246
01:09:31,560 --> 01:09:32,000
Speaker 1: the works.

1247
01:09:32,400 --> 01:09:34,640
Speaker 3: Why has nobody done that? Yeah? Absolutely?

1248
01:09:35,120 --> 01:09:37,800
Speaker 1: I read that some of the extras on one of

1249
01:09:38,000 --> 01:09:41,200
Speaker 1: the physical releases of this included a sequence where we

1250
01:09:41,320 --> 01:09:44,439
Speaker 1: get to see a young Hummer band in which all

1251
01:09:44,439 --> 01:09:48,559
Speaker 1: four members of the band are Yon Hummer. So there

1252
01:09:48,560 --> 01:09:50,240
Speaker 1: are some extras like that I'd like to see as well.

1253
01:09:50,280 --> 01:09:51,839
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a stream of that anywhere.

1254
01:09:52,040 --> 01:09:52,840
Speaker 3: That's beautiful.

1255
01:09:53,200 --> 01:09:56,679
Speaker 1: All right. As of publication time, we have not yet

1256
01:09:56,720 --> 01:09:58,680
Speaker 1: heard back from the director. If we do hear back

1257
01:09:58,680 --> 01:10:01,879
Speaker 1: from the director, please tune in to the next Listener

1258
01:10:01,920 --> 01:10:07,240
Speaker 1: Mail episode and we will share his answers to our questions.

1259
01:10:07,960 --> 01:10:09,479
Speaker 1: All Right, We're gonna go ahead and close out this

1260
01:10:09,560 --> 01:10:12,639
Speaker 1: episode of Weird House Cinema. This one's been fine. We'd

1261
01:10:12,680 --> 01:10:15,439
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there. Were you too

1262
01:10:15,680 --> 01:10:20,040
Speaker 1: a child of the nineties, Do you remember the commercials

1263
01:10:20,080 --> 01:10:23,759
Speaker 1: for this on TV or in print? Did you rent

1264
01:10:24,160 --> 01:10:27,639
Speaker 1: or purchase Beyond the Mind's Eye? And how much did

1265
01:10:27,680 --> 01:10:30,679
Speaker 1: it blow your mind? We want to hear your thoughts

1266
01:10:30,680 --> 01:10:32,600
Speaker 1: on it and what has it been like to revisit it.

1267
01:10:33,880 --> 01:10:35,920
Speaker 1: What are your What are your thoughts on some of

1268
01:10:36,120 --> 01:10:39,880
Speaker 1: our various ideas that we presented in this episode. Let's

1269
01:10:39,880 --> 01:10:42,840
Speaker 1: see if you We'll just remind you here that Weird

1270
01:10:42,840 --> 01:10:46,320
Speaker 1: House Cinema. These are Friday in the Stuff to Blow

1271
01:10:46,320 --> 01:10:49,320
Speaker 1: Your Mind podcast feed we're primarily a science and culture podcast,

1272
01:10:49,320 --> 01:10:52,559
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays

1273
01:10:52,560 --> 01:10:54,840
Speaker 1: we set all that aside for the time being. If

1274
01:10:54,840 --> 01:10:56,240
Speaker 1: you want to see a complete list of all the

1275
01:10:56,240 --> 01:10:58,400
Speaker 1: films we've covered on Weird House Cinema over the years,

1276
01:10:58,400 --> 01:11:00,160
Speaker 1: go to letterbox dot com. It's L E T T

1277
01:11:00,280 --> 01:11:03,160
Speaker 1: E R B O x D dot com. Our profile

1278
01:11:03,360 --> 01:11:06,400
Speaker 1: is weird House and you will find the list. Sometimes

1279
01:11:06,400 --> 01:11:09,720
Speaker 1: there'll be a sneak peek ahead at what's coming out

1280
01:11:09,960 --> 01:11:11,000
Speaker 1: the following week.

1281
01:11:11,479 --> 01:11:15,160
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.

1282
01:11:15,520 --> 01:11:17,200
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1283
01:11:17,200 --> 01:11:19,799
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1284
01:11:19,840 --> 01:11:22,040
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1285
01:11:22,160 --> 01:11:24,760
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

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Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

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Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 2: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.