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