The Erasure of Ahmed Best

 First, I just want to check that Jar Jar Binks would look kinder with the eyes of a furious Gollum...

... than with the goats' willies he was given...

  

 Yep okay, he never stood a chance. Why am I writing about Jar Jar Binks at two o'clock in the morning? Because the Vulture's list of "a hundred sequences that shaped animation" which I linked to on Sunday had one serious but typical omission: While Gollum obviously made it on because he's extraordinary, the performance providing the script for all motion-capture software programmed in the last two decades was not Andy Serkis' in The Two Towers, but Ahmed Best's in The Phantom Menace. And it's not clear from the behind-the-scenes pictures of the actor in a rubber suit, taken back in the day when green screens were still blue...

... but Best would return to perform Jar Jar in a motion-capture suit months after principal photography, and it was this work which would go into programming not only cinema's first ever completely computer-generated lead character, but every single motion-capture computer-generated character since, Gollum included. Ahmed Best wasn't just the Neil Armstrong of mo-cap CGI, he was the Adam and Eve, which isn't nothing, whatever you think of CGI.

 (A brief tangent: Look at Han idly fingering that stucco - 

 

 That's what happens when you put an actor on a set!) 

 

 Back to the CGI: I only learnt about Best's contribution to the history of animation this June when he appeared on Nicole Byer and Lauren Lapkus's podcast "Newcomers", and I remember thinking I must remember him. He has anecdotes to rival Peter Serafinowicz's too - of his first audition at Skywalker Ranch, for example, crawling across the floor like a salamander in a baffling scuba-suit covered in ping-pong balls, or of Michael Jackson's jealousy when he finally landed the role. You can listen to it here. He soundd like he's doing well. It was only researching him later that I found out that this was, pretty famously, not always the case.

 

 But he seems to be doing well now, as I say. I'm just posting this because I find his contribution exciting: I still don't like Jar Jar of course - Look at those eyes -

 

But Ahmed Best should be on our lists.

 

Benchless in Baatu (Jenny Nicholson does some digging)

 "What Walt would later describe as the best weekend of his life..."

 Here's animator Ward Kimball and his boss larking around at the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1948 (and here's the source). This delightful photograph pops up in the video below, another great piece to camera from Jenny Nicholson and the subject of today's post (I blogged about her visit to Pandora here). If you've absolutely no interest in Disneyland, then move on, dear reader, but if, like me, you think it might be the most impressive work of art of the twentieth century, BOY does Nicholson deliver! "Star Wars Land: An Excruciatingly in-Depth Prequel" is an almost literal dissection of the place. Here's a map:

It is a map I grew up with – hung by the front door where we kept our wellies – of Disneyland from 1976. Dad was a huge fan. When I finally visited the park in the nineties – although I didn't take it in at the time – the area depicted just to the left of Fantasyland was unrecognisable. I'll enlarge it a bit:

 Those tracks are a ride called "Nature's Wonderland". Nicholson's video is full of footage showing it was more than just a mine train ride (although "Walt Loved Trains", and Nicholson makes a great argument for the whole of Disneyland being one huge train set). The place was actually crammed with many modes of transport...

  Importantly they served not only as "conveyances" but a "futuristic mode of ornamentation." To quote Nicholson: "they are not just rides for the people who are on them, they are also symbiotically enhancing the experience for everyone in their sightline."

I love talk about sightlines. The reason you can't see any evidence of the rest of Disneyland is that the whole area was dug out to be eight feet deeper than the rest of the park. By the time I visited, twenty years later, it had all been concreted up – animatronic elk, the lot – to be replaced by the Big Thunder Ranch, including a petting farm with real animals, where Jenny would later work (the park's least popular attraction, but "a quiet place to chill for a minute"). All this was then re-excavated a couple of years ago to create the planet of Baatu for Star Wars Land, which is why I said this video is an almost literal dissection.

  I also love talk about seating arrangements, so it's worth noting the end, where things get darkest, as Nicholson interrogates "Project Stardust" – the plans made by the park to help the "flow" of visitors to Baatu by removing "benches and planters", that is, literally anywhere to sit down or find shade, or as Jenny puts it "a place to linger". There's no petting zoo on Baatu. I don't think that's a decision Walt would have made.

Everything is fire

   A recent timeline of insomniac thoughts, illustrated by "The Mitchell Beazley Joy of Knowledge Library's Book Of Man and Society":

2:05am – "No labels." What’s the difference between “labels” and words? Words themselves can stop communication, because their associations are so much stronger than the work they’re being put to do.

2:09am – Language is like fire.

 

 

2:11am – Not just language. Jokes as well. I'm thinking of the reaction to the Gorilla Channel tweet. Of course Trump doesn't spend seventeen hours a day watching a specially constructed compilation of gorillas fighting, broadcast from a secret transmitter on the White House lawn. Of course it's fine to share that joke. Of course this isn't "fake news". And yet, I know people – friends on facebook – genuinely scared of sharing that joke, not because it will give offense, but because it might now be believed.

 

2:20 am – Everything is fire. Everything that defines us as separate from animals can destroy us, if allowed to run unchecked: jokes, language, money, homes (and therefore property), love. All of it can become too important. Being human demands an attention to the equilibrium. Nothing can run unchecked. The past year has been a real lesson in that. I hope. A lot of people are newly terrified, but the threat's always been there.

2:28am – “Intelligent life” is too rosy a description of what we are. Intelligence is a part of what humans are, sure, but maybe it’s this capacity to create systems which endanger us that should define us, and define what we have in common with whatever we hope to make contact with outside of our own planet, so not “intelligent life” then, but... what? Dependent? Processing? Enhanced? Trapped? Artificious? Harvesting? Is there a word for this most fundamental human quality? What’s the label I’m now looking for?

 

 

2:29am – There are definitely people who will have written about this. I should read more.

3:08am – Leia gets nothing to do in "Empire Strikes Back". She’s the driving force of the films either side of it. It is not the best Star Wars Film.

3:10am to 5:25am –

Ear Plugs

But first, a belated...

Or not. We'll see. I'm going to try and use the blog a lot more this year at least. I wrote nothing last year, not just here but in general, unless you count the slew of comments about The Last Jedi I posted on Joel Morris' f*c*b**k page over the Holidays (WHY EVEN BRING BB-8?) so in 2018 I hope to be less reactive in my internet activity, and more... I don't know... hermetic?

Before I get to work on that insomniac mind-punch however, this week sees me clowning around NOT ONLY in London's glittering and highly monitered West End BUT ALSO in TWO consecutive pleasings on the Radio 4, so let's rinse out that bin and FISH OUT THOSE PLUGS!

THIS EVENING, at half past six, you can hear Angstrom... pronounced "ARNGstrom", and narrated by ME! Half of the retakes were because I pronounced it wrong. I also play Angstrom's boss "Bols Aashol" - a further third of the retakes were me buggering that name up too. Here is a picture of the Swedish Meatball Hot Wrap I bought in the lunch break to research my accent:

And TOMORROW EVENING at half past six you can hear the second episode of series SEVEN of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme. Go on, kiss your ears! Here is a picture of the effect episode one had on the internet:

("Stinkkalk"?)

And if twenty-three and a half hours is too long a wait between those two doses of me, why not ALSO buy a ticket to tomorrow's as-yet-unsold-out matinee of our London run of The Hound of the Baskervilles?

Or, if you can't get a ticket, why not listen to all SIX episodes of the Wireless Theatre Company's Adventures of Drayton Trench, recorded at London's Museum of Comedy which is smaller than the Radio Theatre?

OR download my appearance on International Waters back in September recorded in a big egg on Dean Street?

OR listen to the thrilling latest episode of the now AWARD-WINNING Monster Hunters - "Queen of the Yeti Men" (which I'm not in)? Here is the award!

Yes! I won an award! AND why not vote for Time Spanner over on the British Comedy Guide and give me another one? EH?
WHY NOT? WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU? AND WHAT THE HELL WERE THESE?

End of plugs. Heartfelt details to follow.

Wireless photo by Mike Tomlinson

Happy New Year image care of this.

starwarsbreak

Treats! That Steve Soderbergh sure can make movies, huh? You may know this already, but it turns out he learnt his craft watching "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with the volume and colour turned down, and Trent Reznor's Social Network soundtrack playing over the top. "What does this remind me of?" I pondered as I watched the new cut, and it hit me: Auralnauts' reworking of the Star Wars prequels. Their (His? Her?) best known work is probably this brilliant shred of the original throne room scene minus John Williams' score. You may know this too.

But did you know that they (she? he? heshe?)  also produced three brilliantly redubbed, fifteen-minute stoner-skewed cuts of the later films, arguably improving them, and finally letting one appreciate all of the terrific work that went into these terrible works? It seems the missing ingredient was fun; put that back in and the films look great.

If you got down to that, here's episodes 1 and 3.

"Putting Gaston in his Place": Attitudes towards Animism, Predeterminism and Liminality in that youtube video

 Here's a very charming video of a theme park actor enjoying four minutes of actual acting. I know, from working in the London Dungeon, that in a job like this – normally all character and no drama – a heckling child who totally buys into it can be water in the desert.

  #NOTALLMEN

  But the real reason I'm posting this video is because of  the comment Neil "Ned Mond" Edmond made below, which I think is brilliant and useful:

"What I mainly like about this is that the girl's relationship with the characters and narrative matches what I hope eg. a pre-Christian norseman's relationship with a god might have been: The story is both finished and ongoing, and intervention is meaningful even when the result is predetermined."

See also: playing with Star Wars figures.

EXCITING SPACE ADVENTURE : TEASER TRAILER

- No... No! thought Zobar - Here? AGAIN?! Why a desert? Why is it always a desert?!
"Zobar, come back to bed." murmured Zorin.
- Again? Again?! How did I get here. Where's my helmet? Shit. SHIT!
"Zobar, baby. There has been an awakening. Have you felt it? Oo yeah."
"I, uh, I should get going, Zorin. Suns're up. And that's not a bed. That's the insides of... I don't know what that is."
"Sun's never up. And like you've never slept in guts."
"Not everyone sleeps in guts. How did that even start as a thing? Uh. Seriously, Boink will be wondering where I've got to. Thanks. Thanks for everything -"
"Who's Boink? WHO THE FUCK IS BOINK?"
"Zorin, Boink's just my droid."
"You gave your droid a name?"
"Yeah."
"Huh... I didn't know we were allowed to do that."
A dog fight roared overhead.
"This used to be such a quiet place. The dark side and the light," Zorin muttered, "Spoilt Macho Gumball Wacky-Race assholes..."

Fifteen clicks away, Boink finished his third jacket potato, and ran over his own head. Again.

EXCITING SPACE ADVENTURE 3

 "Oh yes," bleated Zagthus, "Sorry, sometimes it does that."

(Thank you, Ralph "designed Star Wars" McQuarrie.)

The Public Reaction

(originally posted on myspace here)

All finished!

"Yeah but hang on, Simon, eff off! You can't just disappear for a month then swan back online with 'The Public Reaction' like nothing's happ- Oo! Footage!"

Haha! Yet again I deflect your fictional carping, my shit-giving mental construct...  And now, look, if you didn't know by now, dear actual reader, regarding our show "Money" the press were good to us, very good. They said this ("cool"! four stars) and this ("teasing"! four stars) and this ("DISCERNIBLE"! four stars). There was also a not basically accurate reference to Shunt's own finances here ("Oo yeah let's read that!" four belms)... which, which, which...which is as good a place as any to mention that the Lounge will now finally be closing its doors at the end of next week. The fourteenth. Moving off. Sharded. So get your skates on. (Shit. Money's staying where it is though. That's safe. And sold out. Go Tweaks!) Various new locations have been considered. I'll show you one of them in the next post, and that will lead me on to other relocations I must fill you in on, which will in turn - basically it's alright, this blog is now sorted. Let's celebrate...

Whee.

Right I have to head off now. I'm using the Lounge's internet and everyone's gone. Nigel promised me a giant Nosferatu head left over from Halloween if I came round, then he shouted at me because I was on the computer all the time and wouldn't go with him on the boat in the tunnel of balloons George had made to look like the Super K Subterranean Neutrino Observatory after it had shut so I did. And it was good. Get your skates on.

And speaking of tweaks, you see that guy on the left in this video? That's us, in rehearsals. Okay, mainly me... Who's the guy on the right? No idea.

But the results speak for themselves.