Firesign before Python

Before I first heard Monty Python on WBCN in Boston in 1971-72, the station played records by the comedy troupe The Firesign Theatre. Founding member Peter Bergman has died. In The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye, Bergman played Lt. Bradshaw, as heard in this audio clip.

http://youtu.be/Ouuq5J7lSuY

The first three Firesign Theatre albums are my favorites. They’re smart, savvy, carefully crafted, intricate, subversive, and for myself Nick Danger led to an interest in what is now called Old Time Radio. For someone of my generation, the Firesign Theatre records hold up well to repeated listenings, and they evoke a great deal of nostalgia. There was that time in college, in a dorm room that was not mine, listening to Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers, and… uh… well, never mind about that.

“… and there’s hamburger all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut…”

Moebius strip

When I noted the passing of Ralph McQuarrie last week, I also thought of the cartoonist Jean Giraud, and now the man who called himself Moebius is also dead. Giraud came to mind because he was one of the artists who worked on Alien, along with Ron Cobb and H.R. Giger. As influential as Star Wars was, only two years later, while The Empire Strikes Back was in production, Alien redefined the look and feel of Sci-Fi movies.

A close encounter with Douglas Trumbull

Director and legendary special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull lives in Western Massachusetts. Monday on WBUR he spoke with Tom Ashbrook about the future of cinema.

[audio:http://audio.wbur.org/storage/2012/03/onpoint_0305_2.mp3|titles=Tom Ashbrook interviews Douglas Trumbull]

Trumbull talks about 3-D movies, and he brings up the very important point that 3-D is very DIM in movie theaters, and they need to be much brighter. I’d go further and say that in general movies are, like today’s comic books, much too dark and colorless.

A Stellar Artist

Ralph McQuarrie, best known as the production artist on Star Wars, has died. McQuarrie’s work had a clean, open and subdued style, reflecting his background as a technical illustrator, and he greatly influenced the look of first three Star Wars movies. Star Wars, the first film, was unlike anything ever seen before, despite being a throwback to the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials of the 1930’s. StarWars.com has a remembrance from George Lucas, with a gallery of McQuarrie’s work.

From The STAR WARS Portfolio, Ballantine Books, September, 1977

McQuarrie, born June 13, 1929, in Gary, Indiana, was influenced by his grandfather, who did watercolors, and his mother, who drew and painted. It wasn’t long before he settled on a career in art. He took an art major in high school, studied technical illustration, and then went to work for the Boeing Company. There he met people who had studied at and recommended the Art Center School in Los Angeles. After two years in Korea, he enrolled at Art Center as an illustration student.

The ease with which McQuarrie understood the highly technical visuals required for STAR WARS is particularly explained by his earlier work for CBS News Apollo coverage as well as for Boeing, Litton Industries, and Kaiser Graphuics. His work for CBS, doing artist’s renderings of the capsules’ travel through space — making visible what could not otherwise been seen — generated quite an interest in McQuarrie’s work. He was soon approached about doing animation background paintings and movie-poster art.

Some production paintings McQuarrie had done for Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins brought him to the attention of director George Lucas in late 1975. Very soon after, they began discussing production paintings for STAR WARS. Lucas suggested that McQuarrie approach the work from the point of view of “ideal” portrayals rather than feel restricted by what could actually be achieved in filming the situations repesented in the art.

The first four or five paintings had been done when STAR WARS was still in the development stage through Twentieth Century-Fox. George Lucas felt that McQuarrie’s paintings wouuld not only be of interest to Twentieth, but, by helping them to visualize his ideas, would also dissolve any hesitation on their part to go ahead with making the film.

The production paintings were of incalculable value when it came to discussing STAR WARS’ production design and costuming. They reflect various changes in visual concepts as well as the evolving story line. The ideas of not only George Lucas and Ralph McQuarrie are concretized here, but also those of production designer John Barry and model designers Joe Johnston and Colin Cantwell.

McQuarrie’s paintings were done in a combination of opaque gouache and acrylic on illustration board mounted on hardboard.

CAROL WIKARSKA
DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONS
STAR WARS