>>718788136
>In the past month I have received calls from half a dozen film and television producers who are planning "sci-fi" projects. I won't even report on the call I received about a new Disney project-in-discussion called Star Skirmishes.

>I'll only tell you about the producer who called to ask me if I wanted to do a space war sorta film, and all he could say was, "This is gonna be a winner. We've got really terrific state of the art."

>I didn't know what that meant. So I asked him.

>He didn't understand why I didn't understand, but he started saying they had Magicam and new miniaturization techniques, and computer graphics, and ChromaKey, and videotape crossovers, and "all the very latest state of the art." I finally got hip. He was talking about special effects, pure and simple. No story, no terrific idea for a film that would illuminate the human condition, not even a plot. He had no plot. That's why he was calling me.

>To write something stupid around his stupid animation and special effects nonsense.

>And nomenclature had struck again. Now they were calling it "state of the art." And I submit that when filmmakers begin thinking that pyrotechnics can replace stories about people, then the ambience of the toilet has set in.

>So here we sit. Ben Bova and fantasy film director/animator Jim Danforth and cranky John Simon, and good old me; all alone grumbling about the most wonderful film ever made. Running our main squeeze of sour grapes over the heads of a multimillion person audience that goes back again and again to sit in awe as the Empire dreadnought Death Star roars overhead, making its big boom of passage through airless space. Specters at the Banquet. Loveless, lightless nuisances saying the Emperor has pimples on his bare butt.