SUMMER 06/07 CINEMATHEQUE PROGRAM

Sat 28/10 & Mon 30/10 HALLOWEEN ZOMBIE DOUBLE

I Walked with a Zombie USA/1943/69mins/B&W/16mm Dir: Jacques Tourneur. An ambiguous combination of horror fantasy and psychological thriller, the film blurs the distinction between good and evil, poetically depicting tribal customs without stereotyping.

White Zombie USA/1932/67mins//B&W/16mm Dir: Victor Halperin. Bela Lugosi is at his malevolent best as plantation owner and voodoo priest, Murder Legendre, in this atmospheric creeper.

Sat 4/11 & Mon 6/11 FILMS OF SAUL AND ELAINE BASS

This program celebrates the vision of Hollywood’s greatest graphic designer, Saul Bass, creator of many memorable short films, title sequences and poster designs for Hitchcock, Scorsese and others.

Bass on Titles USA/1977/35mins/Colour/16mm. Bass discusses the development of his titles designed for feature films. The film features ten of the more than forty film titles Bass has created including, 'Man with the Golden Arm', 'Seconds', and 'Walk on the Wild Side'.

Why Man Creates USA/1968/24mins/Colour/16mm. Using a variety of film techniques, Bass examines the nature of the creative process. Won an Oscar for Best Short Documentary of 1969.
“This is a really powerful documentary.” imdb.com
“I saw it twice in high school. My teacher was Eliza Stone. She was strange and tough- a frail old bird whose class is one of the few I would not cut.” imdb.com

The Searching Eye USA/1964/16mins/Colour/16mm. A cinemato-graphic treat in which ordinary objects reveal unexpected worlds of visual experience.

Psycho (Trailer) USA/1960/7mins/B&W/16mm. Bass & Hitchcock collaborated on this revolutionary promotional trailer for 'Psycho'.

Notes on the Popular Arts USA/1977/20mins/Colour/16mm. Uses live action, animation, and special effects to show how the popular arts in America serve as means of self-projection and fantasy fulfilment. Nominated for the Best Short Film Oscar of 1978.

Quest USA/1983/30mins/Colour/16mm. A race of people are trapped on a strange planet where lack of sunlight and vegetation has reduced the life to 8 short days. Based on a story by Ray Bradbury.

Sat 11/11 & Mon 13/11 dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (Sat. starts 2:30pm)

USA/1998/68mins/Colour/Digital Dir: Johan Grimonprez.Buckle up for this acclaimed hijacking documentary that eerily foreshadowed 9-11. Blends archival footage of hijackings with surreal and banal themes, including fast food, pet statistics, disco, and quirky home movies. David Shea composed the superb soundtrack to this free fall through history. The theme of hijacking planes can be read as a metaphor for the hijacking of images out of their context.

"An eccentric, roller coaster ride through history." Time Out

Sat 18/11 & Mon 20/11 OFF THE CHARTS

USA/2003/58mins/Colour/Digital Dir: Jamie Meltzer. This fascinating, at times unsettling, documentary exposes the strange underworld of the song-poem industry. In this little known subculture, "ordinary people" respond to come-on ads in the back pages of magazines, mailing in their heartfelt but often bizarre poems to "music industry" companies that, for a fee, turn those poems into real recordings. OTC explores a unique, never-before-seen slice of Gothic Americana through interviews with song-poem writers, the jaded producers and musicians who set their words to music, and a few of the growing number of zealous song-poem connoisseurs.

“Probably the best movie you've never seen.” imdb.com

Screens with short 16mm musical films: Let’s Sing with Popeye,
Autobahn, Braverman’s Condensed History of the Beatles,
Fish Heads, Mongoloid, and The Three Little Bops.

Sat 25/11 & Mon 27/11 PARODIES

There are chuckles aplenty with this gaggle of zany send-ups.

Hardware Wars USA/1977/13min/Colour/16mm Dir: Ernie Fosselius. Silly and amateurish, but hilarious nonetheless, this ‘Star Wars’ spoof was the first fan film and still the best.

The Dove USA/1968/15mins/B&W/16mm Dir: George Coe & Anthony Lover. Madeline Kahn stars in this Oscar nominated Bergman parody that captures the tone of the Swedish master.

Porklips Now USA/1980/22 minutes/Colour/16mm Dir: Ernie Fosselius. A parody of 'Apocalypse Now' featuring Martin Sheen look-alike William Gray as "Dullard".

Blaze Glory USA/1969/8mins/Colour/16mm Dir: Lee Janson & Chuck Menville. Ingeniously filmed Western satire.

Dream Doll UK-Yugoslavia/1979/12mins/Colour/16mm Dir: Bob Godfrey & Zlatko Grgic. A lonely man falls in love with a life-size, inflatable doll in this Oscar nominated animation based on "The Red Balloon". “Twelve minutes of heaven.” imdb.com

Song of the Prairie Czechoslovakia/1949/22mins/Colour/16mm. Dir: Jiri Trnka An operatic parody of American westerns by the virtuoso Czech puppeteer.

Massingham Trailers UK/1949/9mins/B&W16mm. Dir: Richard Massingham. A set of trailers from the films of Richard Massingham, who specialised in making satires of educational films. Henri Langlois once mentioned the director in the same breath as Jean Vigo, Luis Buñuel and Mack Sennett. An antecedent of The Goon Show, Richard Lester and Monty Python, he mined a manic and uniquely British strand of comedy.

Kama Sutra Rides Again UK/1970/9mins/Colour/16mm Dir: Bob Godfrey. This parody of sex manuals by Australian born animator Godfrey was shown before A Clockwork Orange in the UK.

Java Junkie USA/1979/5mins/Colour/35mm Dir: Tom Schiller. A witty film noir send-up about a caffeine addict.

Sat 2/12 & Mon 4/12 AFRO PROMO

Australian Premiere. USA/1997/91mins/Colour & B&W/Digital. Curated by Jenni Olson and Karl Knapper. Filled with insights on race and social dynamics, this fascinating compendium of Coming Attractions explores an extensive range of stylistic approaches – Blaxploitation, Comedy, Music Bio, Plantation Drama, and more – all smartly organized by genre, or viewable as one outrageous joyride through motion picture history.

“A sometimes funny, sometimes frightening look at Tinseltown’s presentation of Blacks.” – Edward Marguiles, Movieline

“Offers considerable fun, and food for thought.” Variety
“Less a history of Hollywood racism than a chilling testament to the capacity of marketing to co-opt social change.” Village Voice

Sat 9/12 & Mon 11/12 Short Film Smorgasbord

A gourmet selection of the finest in short filmmaking.

Les Astronautes France/1960/B&W/13mins /16mm Dir: Walerian Borowczyk. Assistant Dir: Chris Marker . A satirical look at competitive space travel using collage and pixilation techniques

Street of Crocodiles UK/21mins/1986 This animated puppet film is adapted from the short stories of the Polish writer and artist Bruno Schulz published in the thirties. The Street of Crocodiles is part of an eerie, derelict town where strange but recognisably human figures engage in an endless round of apparently meaningless activity.

Very Nice Very Nice Canada/1961/7mins/B&W/16mm Dir: Arthur Lipsett. Impressions of the absurdity and triviality of everyday life, described by Kubrick “one of the most imaginative and brilliant uses of the movie screen and soundtrack that I have ever seen.”

Television Land USA/1971/12mins/B&W/16mm Dir: Charles Braverman. A montage of images of television that indicates the profound effect television is having upon society.

Outer Space Austria/1999/10mins/Colour/16mm Dir: Peter Tscherkassky. Prolific Austrian avant-garde filmmaker and theorist, Tscherkassky. reinvents a 1981 Barbara Hershey horror vehicle in this bravura experimental film. Gavin Smith's Films Of The Year, Film Comment.

The Sandman USA/1981/4mins/Colour/35mm Dir: Elliot Noyes Jr. An animated film made entirely from sand. More titles to come.

Sat 16/12 & Mon 18/12 ROGER CORMAN: KING OF THE B’S

Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel USA/1978/57mins/ Colour/16mm Dir: Christian Blackwood. Corman made his reputation as a director in the ‘50's with films like 'Little Shop of Horrors' and 'Bucket of Blood' then acted as a godfather to a generation of American filmmaking by producing the first films of Scorsese, Coppola, Demme, Bogdanovich, Dante, and many others.

Rock All Night USA/1958/60mins/B&W/16mm. Dir: Roger Corman. This 'fairly deranged rock and roll suspense picture' is a personal favourite of Corman's: 'One of the strangest movies I ever made'. It was shot on one set in a fortnight.

Sat 23/12 Only SATANIC HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD

For years religious groups have claimed Hollywood a dark satanic mill, hell-bent on perverting the minds of impressionable youth. Now, for the first time, you’ll learn the shocking truth behind the Satanic influence in Hollywood in a special multimedia presentation on Hollywood’s satanic underground presented before tonight’s films by Cinematheque curator Brett Garten. Xmas parties welcome.

All Eyes on Sharon UK/1969/12mins/B&W/16mm. Production Featurette about the making of eye of the Devil starring Sharon Tate.

Lucifer Rising USA/1972-1981/27mins/Colour/16mm Dir: Kenneth Anger. An intricate tapestry of images that is about as pure as cinema gets. 'Lucifer Rising' is given dramatic emphasis by Bobby Beausoleil's psychedelic rock score, recorded while he was serving time in prison for his involvement with the Manson Family Murders.

Invocation of My Demon Brother USA/1969/11mins/Colour/16mm Dir: Kenneth Anger. Mick Jagger created the droning Moog soundtrack to this fast moving collage of Magick elements.
“Anger’s short films - and especially this one - have probably been more important in shaping pop and art culture than any other single short film. For that he deserves credit and recognition.” imdb.com

Seventh Victim USA/1943/71mins/B&W/16mm Dir: Mark Robson Regarded as the most personal of producer Val Lewton's productions, and until Rosemary’s Baby, the benchmark for occult horror in Hollywood, this story, about a society of devil-worshippers in Greenwich Village and their attempt to silence one of their members when she endangers their secrecy, is rich in detail; but it is also the oppressive mood, the romantic obsession with death-in-life, which dominates the film.

Sat 30/12 & Mon 1/1 WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER

Australian Premiere. USA/2001/97mins/Colour/35mm Dir: David Wain. Janeane Garofolo and Paul Rudd star in this witty parody of coming-of-age teen movies of the 70s & 80s. Laugh away your NYE hang-over with this over-looked comic gem, never released in Australia, and presented here for the first time in a brilliant 35mm print.

“ A delectable parody of dawn-of-the Reagan-era teen flicks.” David Ansen, Newsweek
“The funniest movie I’ve seen all year.” Ain’t it Cool News

Sat 6/1 & Mon 8/1 RAINBOW MAN

Australian Premiere USA/1997/48mins/Colour/Digital Dir: Sam Green. From the makers of the Academy Award nominated doco, ‘The Weathermen’ comes ‘Rainbow Man’ - one of the most bizarre cases in the annals of American true crime. Rollen Frederick Stewart, a.k.a. ‘Rainbow Man’, achieved notoriety during the late 70's by appearing in the crowd at thousands of televised sporting events wearing his trademark rainbow-coloured afro wig. Later - after he became a born-again Christian - he added a sign reading "John 3:16". Over the years, grabbing the attention of the media became an obsession for Stewart. He abandoned his home and marriage to roam the country living out of his car, studying TV Guide each week in a never-ending quest to stay televised... with tragic consequences.

"More than an exploration one life, The Rainbow Man is a parable about alienation, the media, and the meaninglessness that often defines American life." Trevor Groth, Sundance Film Festival

Sat 13/1 & Mon 15/1 Films of LEN LYE

New Zealand born painter, filmmaker, sculptor, writer and teacher, Len Lye, was an artist’s artist and pioneer of “direct” cinema, or making films without a camera. Lye was also a member of Britain’s Realist Film Unit and made documentaries, commercials, and propaganda, or “morale-booster” films. The diverse talents of this eccentric and under-rated artist will be presented tonight with this extensive retrospective of his work. Monday’s screening will be accompanied by a talk by producer John Maynard, former director of the Len Lye Foundation.

Tusalava UK/1929/B&W/7mins/Digital. Lye's first film concerns Aboriginal myths about the witchetty grub.

Rainbow dance UK/1930/4mins/Colour/16mm. An ingenious animated advertisement for the British Post Office.

Experimental Animation UK/1933/2mins/B&W/16mm Fragment of unfinished film by Len Lye using puppet-animation.

Kaleidoscope UK/1935/Colour/4mins/16mm. An abstract film, made as a cigarette commercial using stencilling and hand painting.

Birth of a Robot UK/1936/7mins/Colour/16mm. Puppet film produced for the Shell Oil Company.

Trade Tattoo: The Rhythm of Work-a-Day Britain UK/1937/6mins/Colour/16mm Black and white documentary footage is fed through the Technicolor separation system so that it gains some of the complexities of modern painting.

Colour Flight UK/1938/5mins/Colour/Digital. A mainly abstract film, ostensibly an airline commercial, painted directly onto celluloid and synchronised to 'Honolulu Blues'.

Kill or be Killed UK/1939/18mins/B&W/16mm. Army training film showing how a British soldier stalks and kills a German sniper.

Swinging the Lambeth Walk UK/1939/4mins/Colour/Digital
Abstract animation is synchronised to music.

Newspaper Train UK/1939/6mins/B&W/16mm This wartime morale-booster displays Lye's eccentric sense of humour and his ingenuity in using simple film tricks to achieve complex effects.

N or NW UK/1940/8mins/16mm Slightly surreal tale of a couple sorting out their differences by letter.

Musical Poster No. 1 UK/1940/2mins/Colour/16mm. This hand- painted film warns the public against the danger of talking too much.

When the Pie Was Opened UK/1941/B&W/8mins/16mm. Lively war-time propaganda film giving a recipe for a vegetable pie.

Cameramen at War UK/1941/15mins/B&W/16mm. Documentary on the task of the newsreel cameramen.

Color Cry UK/4mins/1952/Digital. An innovative direct film.

Rhythm UK/1957/B&W/5mins/Digital. The process of assembling a car is cut to match the rhythms of African drum music.

Free Radicals USA/1958-1979/4mins/B&W/16mm. A primitive kinetic dance of white lines and angles meticulously scratched onto black and white film over an 8-month period.

Particles in Space USA/1979/4mins/B&W/Digital. Simple scratches on black leader film take on profound qualities when synchronised to tribal drumming.

Tal Farlow USA/1980/B&W/3 minutes/Digital. Black scratch designs accompany a piece of jazz guitar music.

Sat 20/1 & Mon 22/1 BEST AND WORST ADS

USA-UK-Australia-France-Germany/120mins/B&W & Colour/ 16mm & 35mm. Two hours of the best and worst cinema and TV ads spanning the twenties to the naughties. From the first cinema advertisements produced by German avant-garde artist, Oscar Fischinger, through the incredible advertising films of Len Lye, to the latest high tech ads – this is a vast collection of hucksters and hacks, snake-oil salesmen and visionaries.

Saturday 27/1 BLACKTOP DREAMS

UK author Jack Sargeant will discuss the road movie genre in a guest lecture / Q&A - part of the Chauvel’s road movie season.

Two-Lane Blacktop USA/1971/102mins/Colour/16mm. Dir: Monte Hellman. This existential road movie is an under-rated cult classic and stars Warren Oates, James Taylor, and the Beach Boys Denis Wilson as rev-heads racing because there's nothing else to do.

Sunday 28/1 BLACKTOP DREAMS DOUBLE

Gun Crazy USA/1949/87mins/B&W/16mm Dir: Joseph H. Lewis A sexed-up film-noir couple-on-the-lam road movie described by the Surrealists as a film-noir version of L’age D’or.

They Live By Night USA/1948/95mins/B&W/16mm Dir: Nicholas Ray. A bleak tale of young love on the run from the law and heading nowhere. A classic.

The Chauvel Cinematheque acknowledges the assistance of the National film and Video Lending Service, the National Film & Sound Archive and the Australian Film Commission in the creation of this program.

Transcript of an introductory talk to The Dark Side of the Rainbow 21/10/06

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the final screening in the first Chauvel Cinematheque program. My name is Brett Garten and I am the curator of the Cinematheque program, a projectionist here at the Chauvel, and your host for what I hope is a very enjoyable evening. Tonight we are to enter the mysterious world of “syncing” where classic movies and classic albums are played simultaneously to create a new hybrid work of art.

Before I go on I’d like to point out some of the distinguished members in the audience – Film historian, director and all round movie whiz Mr Barrie Pattison. Barrie has the honour of walking out of almost every cinematheque screening. The big question is - Will he make it through today’s screening? Also in the audience tonight ladies and gentlemen, one of Sydney’s leading film buffs, veteran Neighbours screenwriter and all round nice guy, Michael O’Rourke.

Also in the audience tonight Tina Kaufman, Eoghan Lewis of Sydney Architecture Walks, so local history buffs take note, Mr Lewis is in the colourful knitted sweater.

So we’ve come to an end to the first cinematheque program and I’ve saved the best till last. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have become members. I’d especially like to thank everyone who took out annual memberships. The faith and commitment you’ve shown in the programming delights me and your generous finacncial contribution has certainly helped keep this little project viable.

The membership system is unavoidable for two reasons. One, it is a requirement of the NFVLS, a vast library in Canberra from which the majority of the films in the last program were sourced. Secondly, and more importantly, it gives me the right to screen films unclassified by the OFLC, thus avoiding censorship, and the privilege of having to pay for said censorship. Not that I’m going to show anything too crazy... well, you never know.

Okay, before we get to today’s film, I’d like to say a few things about the new program. One, there are a few digital presentations on this new program. Yes, I know some, maybe many of you, are film purists. I’m the same, but I have included a few digital programs in this new calendar. Yes, I’d love to present only film at the cinematheque, and I promise, I will show a lot of film, but 1) good prints, especially 35mm prints are simply not available, unless I import them at great expense, and 2) the Lenard sound sytem installed at the Chauvel really shows up the limitations of 16mm sound, whereas DVDs and Betacam tapes sound great. Lastly, the Cineo video projector we have here in Cin. 1 is an excellent high definition video projector that offers picture quality comparable to 16mm. I have run 16mm and dvd of the same film side by side, and while you can tell the difference, the video does in many ways look and sound better; the image is sharper, the source material is generally free of the annoying scratches, dirt and colour shift found on most 16mm prints, and finally the sound is great. We have also just this week acquired a digital media server, which, while I’m still to get my head around it, will provide much opportunity in the future for both more diverse programming and excellent picture quality.

I did a short demonstration of the incredible Lenard sound system behind the screen here at the Chauvel a few weeks ago, and tonight, you will hear it in full force. You will also see the excellent Norwegian Cineo video projector in action for the first time in a cinematheque program tonight as tonights short tonight is off DVD. I have dumped the short film advertised in the program, the rather bland anti-drug educational film The Wizard of Yes, and replaced it with something called Jovian Echoes. Now Jovian Echoes is another example of this "syncing" phenomena- it's the trip sequence from the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey matched up with Pink Floyd’s epic psychedelic powerhouse, Echoes, off the Meddle album. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed by this last minute reshuffle. In fact, these two sync up as if they were made for each other. There is even a rumour floating around that the track was a demo made by Floyd and sent to Kubrick at the time he was cutting 2001, who used it as a temp track for the ending of the film. In an interview with Dave Gilmour, he states that his biggest regret was not doing the soundtrack for 2001, the implication being that he had sent off a demo track, or at least expressed some interest, to Kubrick for his consideration.

Before I go on about Dark Side of the Rainbow, I’d like to draw your attention to some of the highlights of the new program. The Satanic History of Hollywood, a program that includes two shorts by Kenneth Anger, Lucifer rising and Invocation of My Demon Brother, plus the 1942 Val Lewton production The Seventh victim, one of my favourte movies. I will also present an hour-long powerpoint presentation, the Satanic History of Hollywood, - consisting of five interlocking mini-biographies that document the shocking truth behind the satanic history of Hollywood - based on an essay I have been trying to write for the last ten years.

The second highlight is the films of Len Lye. Lye was a New Zealander who was a pioneer of direct cinema. By direct cinema, I mean making films without a camera, using painting, stenciling and scratching on the actual film stock itself. Lye invented the techniques used by Brakhage and Norman McLaren that we saw featured in the last program. He was also a pioneer of experimenting with colour processes. Not only that, he was also one of the pioneers of advertising films, or ads and his ads have to be seen to be believed. They are still to this day, far more sophisticated artistically than the ads of today.

Furthermore, he wasn’t just a filmmaker, he was also a painter, a kinetic sculptor (by kinetic I mean he scuplpted or rather engineered these giant moving sculptures) and a philosopher, whose philosphy was outlined in the book Individual Happiness Now, which I am still looking for if you find of a copy. Lye was arguably the greatest film artist to emerge from this part of the world and the program will consist of two hours,/twenty films by this amazing and eccentric genius. Not only that but I have also secured producer John Maynard, producer of Sweetie, The Boys, and many other of Australias’ greatest films, to give a talk on the night about Len Lye. Mr Maynard was a former director of the Len Lye Foundation in New Zealand and knew Len quite well.

The third promising program is the two hour compilation I have entitled rather blandly, Best and Worst Ads. This program consists of over a hundred ads - from the dawn of cinema to the present day - and promises to be for me , a major hassle – imagine selecting and splicing over a hundred separate films together. But hopefully, for you, it will be a bit of a treat.

But that’s in the future. Tonight it’s time for Dark Side of the Rainbow.

Early on in the cinematheque program, I think it was after the second program, Wax and the Discovery of Television Among the Bees, a member came up to me after the show and said, "Brett, do you have to be on psychedelic drugs to enjoy every film in the cinematheque program?" I said to him, "Well, no..." but I think today it would definitely help. I’m going to talk for another ten minutes or so, and our short today is about 25mins, so, in case you’re wondering ... there is still time.

The mother of all syncs, Dark Side of the Rainbow, was said to be discovered about twenty years ago by persons unknown, persons highly likely to be under the influence of psychedelic drugs. The idea is to sync up the 1939 MGM classic, The Wizard of Oz, with Pink Floyd’s 1973 art-rock classic, Dark Side of the Moon. Both film and album are among the most famous works of the twentieth century in their respective media and are familiar to almost everyone. Wizard... would have been the most popular movie of all time, had it not been gazumped the same year by Gone with the Wind, and Dark Side... was noted for it's prolonged presence in the Billboard charts - a phenomenal testament to its brilliance.

There is a lot of talk on the internet about this particular sync – some people swear it was planned by the band - that the mysterious coincidences are just too perfect, while others cite the psychologist Carl Jung’s term synchronicity as the explanation. Jung described synchronicity as a kind of meaningful coincidence, and used synchrocity to illustrate his idea of a collective unconscious – where all is connected, all is one.

Rather than go into the debate here, I will just cite a mysterious example. What is the name of the most famous song in Wizard of Oz?.. Over the Rainbow. And what is on the cover art of Dark Side of the Moon?.. A prism.

So note here that the front cover of Dark Side... goes from a black and white prism to a coloured rainbow, just like the movie goes from B&W to colour, and that on the back of the album, it goes from colour to B&W – again, just like in the movie.

Now you may think it’s all a load of bong-wash, but it is fun to speculate. The more you know about the movie, and the album, the more media literate you are, the more you will see. Personally, I think that the brain has an intrinsic drive to make order out of chaos, to see patterns and make connections. I think that is the real reason behind its significance. Your brain will get a real work-out today, far geater than a sudoku puzzle or a cryptic crossword. It will strive to see the connections and make out the patterns between the film and the album.

A film as famous as the Wizard of Oz has many stories about it. For one, conspiracy theorists claim, and I don’t fully understand this, that it is somehow used as a mind control weapon by the illuminati. The illuminati are said to be an occult group made up of powerful men who secretly control the world. The conspiracy was popularised by psychedelic era author Robert Anton Wilson. The man who wrote the book The Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum, was apparently a member of the Theosophical Society, an early precursor to the new age cults and new religious movements of today. The Theosophical Society was led by Madame Blavatsky, and its members included Rudolph Steiner and Krishnamurti. Baum was said to have created The Wizard of Oz book as a theosophical fairy tale, incorporating the ancient wisdom of the so-called mystery religions, or occult religions. The yellow brick road is said to signify gold, or money, which is the name of the most famous song on the album, and that to follow the yellow brick road is to follow the path of materialism, consumerism, capitalism, the Great Satan. The moral of ...Oz is that of individualism, of putting the yourself first, the first precept of the Satanic universe. paranoid critics claimed that Baum had dressed up Satan's original lie and were distributing it worldwide as popular American fairy tale.

One other interesting story about the Wizard of Oz is the myth of the hanged man - that a man hung himself on the set of the film and it was caught on-camera. In one version of the sory a munchkin extra hung himself on the set as a result of an unrequited love. You can see it in the background of the scene where the tinman is dancing on the yellow brick road and there is a large bird, a crane, walking around in the middle-ground. As Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow walk up the yellow brick road at the end of the scene, look at the trees at the top of the screen just left of the middle and you’ll see the hanging man. The hanging man story was a hook reported in the news at the time of the Wizard of Oz's 50th anniversary in 1989, but has since proved to be fake. How could a man hang himself on a film set and none of the many cast and crew notice? It may be a myth, but it sure looks like a hanging man. Far-out conspiracists postulate that the hanging man is also a card in the tarot deck, but after watching it a few times, it is in fact the bill of a second bird - another crane.

But enough speculation. To wrap up, some of you may have twigged that the album is only half he length of the movie. Well there are several theories as to what to do next: 1. Repeat the album, or 2. Play animals, then meddle. After some late night experimentation I discovered that the second half of the films works beautifully with the first Pink Floyd album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The whimsical nature of the record, thanks largely to the recently departed original Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barret, is a great fit. It’s a much rawer, freakier album than Dark Side... and suits the second half of the movie. So Dark Side will play through, then repeat a bit, and then its off to Syd Barret land for the conclusion.

Anyway I hope you enjoy the show and hope to see you next week for a special Halloween zombie double. Thank You.