The Dam Busters, 1955

An image from the famous take-off scene in The Dam Busters.
Three of the nine Lancaster bombers on their way to Germany's Ruhr Dams on 16 May 1943.

I jokingly referred to the 1955 movie, The Dam Busters, in a post about busting beaver dams near the Havelock yard. I hadn't watched it in decades, so I rented a copy and sat down one blustery afternoon last week and watched again. I wasn't disappointed.

I can't comment on its historical accuracy, but I will say it's a docudrama. I don't know how it would fare with today's audiences as its dialogue is sometimes politically incorrect, the special effects are crude by today's standards, and the pacing is slow compared to modern films.

A Lancaster bomber at the Canadian Aviation & Space Museum circa 2018
Of the 133 airmen on the dam busters raid, 30 were Canadians, half didn't return.

But, that said, the aircraft scenes, the portrayal of the mission, the acting, and the emotional and psychological veracity are compelling. Also, the portrayal of real-life engineering, its ups and downs, its bureaucratic frustrations, and its sometimes exhilarating successes feel real to me as a lapsed aeronautical engineer. I was glad to see the legendary engineer Barnes Wallis portrayed in the movie, and that his role wasn't minimized.

I'd rate it 8.5 to 9 out of 10. 

Paperback version published by Abacus, 2008.

I said I'd write more about books, so here's one with a little Dam Busters spin. 

I read this one by Harry Pearson, Achtung Schweinehund!: A Boy's Own Story of Imaginary Combat, over the winter. It's an account of Pearson's lifelong involvement in the hobby of war gaming, miniature figures, and military models. It's fact filled, fascinating, sympathetic, and endlessly humorous. He has this to say about the movie:

"The Dam Busters starred Richard Todd [JDL: he plays Wing Commander Guy Gibson], a mainstay of British war films. He had also been a mainstay of the British war. The Dublin-born actor had served in the 7th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, taken part in the Normandy Landings and had been a member of the Allied spearhead that cut through German lines to join the airborne troops, commanded by Major Howard, who had captured the Pegasus Bridge. In the film D-Day the Sixth of June Todd played his own commanding officer, while in Darryl F. Zanuck's epic The Longest Day he played the part of Major Howard, with a younger actor taking the role of Richard Todd. In the 1958 film I Was Monty's Double, meanwhile, M. E. Clifton-James, who had indeed been Monty's double, took the parts of Monty and his double, thus playing himself being himself as well as playing the man he had been playing at being. The war had already gone postmodern. Little wonder that a primary school boy [JDL: the author] could get confused between fact and fiction."

The book is full of these sorts of gems. Get it, and watch the film.

Only Angels Have Wings ... and railcars

Joe (on the left) and Tex (on the right) have just met Bonnie in a Barranca street, a fictional somewhere in South America circa 1939. They're on their way to a swinging night spot.

Tex: Oh, oh. Look out!

Some sort of Model-T like car on train wheels, loaded with revellers, comes zooming down the track that lies in the middle of the street. 

Tex and a passenger exchange howdies.

After which the car speeds off into the Barranca night.

Bonnie: What was that?

Tex: 5th Avenue Bus Line.

Over the weekend I was rewatching Routine Pleasures and noticed that the director, Jean-Pierre Gorin, seemed to hint in a few places that aspects of his documentary were loosely similar to the Howard Hawks movie, Only Angels Have Wings. I hadn't seen the movie, so I corrected that deficiency in my education, and was very glad I did. It's a great film and I highly recommend it. As an extra bonus, there's an interesting little railcar scene early in the opening. This movie doesn't disappoint.

A Review of Architectural Models by Robert Forman

These latter [JDL: ‘latter’ meaning ‘architectural models’] have for many years been the almost exclusive province of card and paper, such models being used extensively by architects in the course of their profession, and these are really a special subject, rather outside the scope of these pages. For those readers who may be interested, an excellent little book on the elements of this craft is “Architectural Models”, by Robert Forman, published by Studio Press.

I ran across that statement in G. H. Deason’s 1958 book Cardboard Engineering with Scissors & Paste, published by Model Aeronautical Press Limited, when I was investigating mentions of ‘Fashion Board’ in old books about miniature building construction. Deason’s book is excellent, so I had to hunt down the one he recommended as an excellent little book on the elements of architectural modelling.

I found an inexpensive and well preserved copy online, but upon arrival I soon discovered what it had to say to be somewhat less than expected, even by the standards of the time it was published - that being 1946. In contrast, John Ahern’s article Madderport’s Buildings that appeared in the July 1942 issue of The Model Railway News is a good example of the beautiful models achievable in that era.

The book itself is a little 64-page gem. It’s full of beautiful line drawings and well written text. The problem seems to be the book is a somewhat simplified overview of the subject, and it never seems to settle on who it’s written for. The dust jacket blurb mentions the book is suitable for children, but once inside the text focuses on the needs and uses of architects, architectural students, and various other professions and students. I don’t think the construction examples and explanations would well serve any of those audiences.

The venerable wall strip technique is shown on the left-hand page - that could be the children's part.

By 1958, when Deason’s book was released, a number of better books on constructing miniature buildings had been published in England: Modelled Architecture by P. R. Wickham in 1948 and Miniature Building Construction by John Ahern in 1950 to name two. Thomas Bayley’s Model Making in Cardboard, which deals almost exclusively with miniature buildings, was also published in 1958, and although quite good, it seems unreasonable to expect Deason to have mentioned it for timing reasons. The point is that by 1958 there were better books on miniature building construction available. Maybe Deason and Forman were friends? Or maybe miniature buildings wasn’t something Deason kept up-to-date on? Who knows? These are more of those unanswerable questions.

And what about recommended materials? The book isn’t focused exclusively on card, but in the materials chapter it mentions: Various papers and cardboard are used, ranging from strawboard to Whatman. I assume Whatman is a brand name of a cardboard, and is being bandied about in the same manner that Strathmore often is by some writers when referring to their Bristol board products. Bristol board is mentioned a few places in the text, as for making window frames, but is not called out in the materials section.

One last thing. Take a look at the following spread:

The so-called American bubble house is shown in the upper left.

I hadn’t heard of an American bubble house, so off to the internet I went. It turns out in the early 1940s there was a Los Angeles based architect, Wallace Neff, who invented a type of semi-spherical house by spraying gunite over an inflatable form such that when the concrete was dry the form could be deflated and removed leaving a dome-like structure behind. What you see in the drawing is a fairly close representation. So, I guess the book was fairly advanced in showing the reader how to model one of those houses.

And then there’s this weird association. Neff? Neff? Where have I heard that name before? Yes, in my favourite movie, 1944's Double Indemnity. Walter Neff was the main character, played by Fred MacMurray. Wallace Neff, Walter Neff? Odd. The movie was based on a 1943 book of the same name written by James M. Cain, but in the book the lead character was called Walter Huff. So, Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder changed the name from Huff to Neff, the last name of our bubble house architect, who by the way was quite famous and made his fortune designing houses for Los Angeles’ elite. Coincidence? Probably, but Architectural Models doesn’t say :-)

Building of Interest

You're right, I've been spending too much time with miniature buildings. In this composite image, the building on the left is a screen grab from an episode in Season 3 of Person of Interest, and on the right is a cropped box-top photo of Walthers' HO scale Bralick Building kit. The similarities are similar :-) Years ago I used the kit as the basis for Mr. Scott's Dilithium Crystal Factory and for The Oceanview Hotel. Interestingly, the kit includes a roof-top water tower, like the Person of Interest building, but it has been apparently airbrushed out of the box-top image. No doubt the architectural style of the Bralick kit is common, and I wouldn't be surprised to find similar looking real buildings in many locations.

High and Low

It's not often that the sound of a trolley pole trolling along the overhead wire, combined with the unique sound of trolley trucks grinding around tight narrow gauge track, provides a clue in a mystery movie, but it does in Akira Kurosawa's High and Low. Don't worry, I haven't given anything away if you haven't seen it. An excellent noir and trolleys. What's not to like?

Mr. Rogers meets E. L. Moore at the Ramsey Journal Building

Double stacked Ramsey Journal Buildings with a custom roof

Last night I watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, starring Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers. Although on the surface one might think this is some sort of Mr. Rogers biopic, Mr. Rogers isn't always the lead, but is often secondary as we learn about his character through his interactions with, and impact on, fictional Esquire writer Lloyd Vogel, played by Matthew Rhys. Overall, a good movie and worth watching.

Ok, but this is 30 Squares, so you probably know what's next. The movie makes extensive use of large, beautiful dioramas of New York and Pittsburg, as well as Mr. Rogers neighbourhood, to bridge various scenes. If that's all you watch the movie to see, that in itself is well worth it if you're into miniature buildings and special effects. (Take note: If you're watching just for the miniatures, make sure you watch all the end credits too because about midway through they've inserted some outtakes showing how the dioramas were used to shoot a number of scenes).

Ok, but here's what grabbed my attention right off the bat, in the opening sequence - a panning shot through Mr. Rogers' neighbourhood - what do I see but a tall brick building made from two E. L. Moore Ramsey Journal Building kits - or possibly, the two storey part of the Grusom Casket Co., which is a repurposed Ramsey Journal Building. In the lead photo, in the upper right corner, you can also see a building with the cupola from the Ramsey Journal kit.

On the DVD is a special feature on building Mr. Rogers' neighbourhood from HO scale plastic kits, and how the miniatures team built those excellent models of New York and Pittsburg. The photo on the right is a snap from that special feature. Those two buildings in the foreground are clearly the Ramsey Journal Building.

That little house at the end of the road is Mr. Rogers'. You see that grey building to the right and across the street? That looks like another Ramsey Journal building, or at least the walls from one.

This is another view of the same scene, from above Mr. Rogers' house looking back down the street. You can see that it's a Ramsey Journal kit. So, Mr. Rogers lived across the street from a building designed by E. L. Moore :-)

There are many well known kits in the neighbourhood from the cheap-and-cheerful era. In this photo, that little yellow bungalow is a very old non E. L. Moore Bachmann kit, which I think dates from the '50s - I have 3 of those stashed away.

In the photo on the right I recognize that split level house in the centre, but I can't quite place the manufacturer. Although, look behind it, that's the classic Revell Superior Bakery kit.

No doubt, an observer more diligent than me could identify the heritage of all the buildings in Mr. Rogers' neighbourhood. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader :-)

The Model Engineer's star turn in Motherless Brooklyn

I'm sleep deprived and have some sort of nasty cold or something - no, not the one that starts with C that's freaking out the world - so my mind is stirred up. I thought I'd try and ease the fire by watching Motherless Brooklyn. Things were going good, but then around the 35 minute mark what do I see than none other than 2 copies of the British magazine The Model Engineer tacked to a newsstand wall. They're those 2 blue magazines on the left, at about middle height.

Me being me, I had to try and figure out what issues they were. The all-knowing internet suggests the one hanging at an angle with some sort of beam engine on the cover is #2770, from June 24 1954, and the one above it and to the left is #2747, from January 14, 1954. 

The wikipedia entry for the movie says the story is set in 1957, so the newsstand is apparently dealing in old back issues of British magazines :-) I might have outfitted the set with old issues of Railroad Model Craftsman as it was being published out of New Jersey at that time :-) But, maybe since civil engineering is a sub-theme of the movie, flashing the The Model Engineer title seemed a good subliminal message of some sort, and since Alec Baldwin's character, Moses Randolph, was said to not like railroads as he couldn't get a piece-of-the-action, the appearance of RMC might undercut other themes :-) There also seems to be a lot of home repair booklets for sale. There might be a lot of DIYers in the neighbourhood, or maybe they're just another subtle message as demolition and deliberate building degradation are another theme :-) Yikes! Set decoration is fraught with problems :-)

It looks like 2 more issues are for sale in the stand's end rack, or maybe they're just the same 2 repositioned for the new shot.

Reading material concerns aside, it's a good movie. I also enjoyed reading the book many years ago. I seem to recall carrying it with me everywhere I went until I finished it. At one point a woman saw me reading it in my optometrist's waiting room and commented that it must be a real sentimental tearjerker with a title like that. How wrong she was, but go find out for yourself.

Studio Model at the Hollywood Heritage Museum

Studio Model overview from above the front gates

We were in Los Angeles last week, and one afternoon we took a little side trip to see the vintage miniature Hollywood diorama at the Hollywood Heritage Museum.

It turns out the majority of the diorama is housed off-site at the museum's annex on Hollywood Boulevard. The annex wasn't open when we visited, but there was a module on display at the museum, the Studio Model, and it was certainly worth dropping by.

To recap a bit, in the 1930s Joseph Pelkofer, a cabinet maker, and a team of around 25 built a diorama - maybe layout would be a better term - of central Hollywood as it was at the time. The layout measured around 11' x 12', and included 450 or so buildings. It's currently being restored by the museum. 

Section of wild west backlot scene

Apparently the Studio Model doesn't represent any particular Hollywood studio, but was meant to illustrate the main elements that comprise one. The miniature buildings are quite well executed, but to me the most interesting items are the back lot sets which include a wild west town, a winter scene, ruins, a sea port from the days of sail, and what looks like a desert scene.

It's not clear what the scale is, but I'd say it's definitely smaller than HO; maybe around TT (1:120); the figures seemed a little too tall for N (1:160). 

There's a lot more film memorabilia in the museum than this module, and the museum building itself is a piece of Hollywood history. The staff were friendly and helpful, and didn't mind thoughtfully answering my odd questions. It's a fascinating place to visit.

I did a little searching to see if I could find anymore information about Joe Pelkofer and his Hollywood layout. Nothing turned up in the Model Railroader archive, but I wouldn't be surprised to find something in Model Craftsman, although I don't have many issues from the '30s.

One interesting detour showed up in Popular Mechanics. In the July 1938 issue they've highlighted on the cover a story about a huge layout built on a Hollywood sound stage for a movie then in production. They don't name the movie, but after a little digging it turns out to be something called Four's a Crowd that was released in 1938. This seems like an A-list feature as it stars Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Rosalind Russell, and Patrick Knowles. The giant layout isn't owned and operated by any of that four, no, it's the domain of actor Walter Connolly, who plays an eccentric millionaire. 

Lucky for us the movie is available online. You get the first glimpse of the layout around the 17 minute mark, and it doesn't fail to impress.

Was The Chinese Cat loose in Washington DC?

Vince did a lot of research to figure out where that streetcar scene in The Chinese Cat was shot. It looks like the producers used stock footage of Washington D.C. streetcars. Ok, that video above is from the early 1950s and not 1944, but you can see the streetcars are quite similar to those in the movie, and the D.C. system at that time used the conduit system for power distribution, which is also seen in the movie. The similarities are similar, and I agree that D.C. is probably the location. Thanks Vince and it looks like a promotion to VP Research is in order ! :-)

Streetcar sighting in The Chinese Cat

About three-and-a-half minutes into the 1944 Charlie Chan movie The Chinese Cat, cab driver Birmingham Brown nearly swerves into the path of an oncoming streetcar when he discovers Charlie Chan is the passenger he's taking to the Francis Hotel. 

We briefly see the oncoming streetcar from Brown's point-of-view. Interestingly, these streamlined streetcars appear to be cable driven: you can see the slot in the road between the rails, and there's no overhead wiring straddling the street. The movie takes place in San Francisco, but if this footage was actually shot in San Francisco, I wonder where? It seems quite flat, and I didn't know they ran cable driven streamliners. I need to investigate.

[Update: Vince mentioned that maybe it isn't powered by a cable, but maybe by a conduit system. I don't know if SF had such a system. Maybe this was some convenient - and cheap - stock footage? Maybe some more investigation is needed?]

A Bandaged Dark Passage

I don't know what to say about Dark Passage. It has the elements of both an excellent noir, and an odd B-movie all in the same movie. But, it stars Bacall and Bogie, not to mention it features the awesomeness of 1947 San Francisco, so based on those things alone I watched it all the way through. 

Lauren Bacall is infinitely watchable as always. And Humphrey Bogart was surprisingly expressive when bandaged.

Well, ok there were the cable cars and the possible streetcar diner, but as far as movies go, those usually aren't enough to hold my attention. I can't believe I wrote that, but it's true :-) 

Look, if you're a Bacall and Bogie fan, watch it.

But, I must admit that Humphrey Bogart as the bandaged, plastic surger-ied Vincent Parry reminded me of Nash the Slash.

And You Thought You Were Normal - Documentary Trailer #1 from SIDE THREE MEDIA on Vimeo.

A Pacific Electric red car in the opening to Ace in the Hole?

On Saturday evening we watched the 1951 noir Ace in the Hole. Given the ongoing discussion here about Dark Passage, I was surprised to see a streetcar used in Ace's opening sequence. The movie starts with Kirk Douglas, as Chuck Tatum, nonchalantly sitting in the driver's seat of his car reading a newspaper while the car is being towed to a garage. We're then cut to a scene of a streetcar rolling by a Spanish colonial building, the offices of the Albuquerque Sun=Bulletin newspaper where Mr. Tatum is going to get a job as a reporter.

I thought, ok interesting, later I'll capture an image for a post, but as I looked at the scene in detail, the streetcar looked like a Pacific Electric red car. I'm no expert on either Albuquerque electric railways or the PE, but it seems unusual for what looks like PE red cars in PE livery to be in operation in New Mexico.

My guess is that this scene was shot somewhere in or around Los Angeles where the PE was still running. The cameraman is sneaky in that the shot starts low, near street level, where it's easy to see the car's paint job and markings, but pans up as the car rolls by to centre on the building's sign, thereby making positive identification of the car more-or-less impossible.

That is a PE car for reference. You can see a number of features similar to the film's car. My gut feeling is that it's a match, but I don't have strong proof.

I guess the moving streetcar, plus the upward camera pan, adds visual interest. I also suspect the use of an old streetcar, in a shot with an old building, is to suggest that life here in this corner of New Mexico is old, sleepy, and a bit out-of-date, which is in stark contrast to Chuck Tatum's style when he makes his entrance to that newspaper office. 

PE cars aside, the movie is excellent, and still seems relevant today. Here's the trailer.

[Update, 4:30pm, 25 Aug: Vince alerted me to this interesting post at Cocoposts. The writer thinks the scene was shot in Albuquerque, as streetcars were still running at that time. Although, I must admit the streetcar in question still seems quite similar to a PE red car. I need to do some investigation.]

Dark Passage to the Powell Street Cable Cars

Cable car 510 from pg. 334

Over at Orange Crate Art Michael Leddy wrote an interesting follow-up to his Harry's Wagon post. The location looks like the famous cable car turntable at Powell and Market in San Francisco.I can only make out the car number, 520, in middle photo. According to Mr. Smallwood in his book, The White Front Cars of San Francisco, 520 and 510, shown over on the left, were from the same batch manufactured in 1891 by Carter Brothers.

Cable Car 514 from pg. 332

I've shown 514 over on the right only to note that you can see a piece of the façade of The Owl Drug Co. in the upper right corner of the photo. It's quite different from that shown in Dark Passage - an earlier incarnation maybe? 514 was manufactured by Mahoney Brothers in 1887.

To wrap up his discussion of the Powell Street cable cars, Mr. Smallwood mentions: It is interesting to note that the Powell-Mason cable line has provided service from terminal to terminal over the same route, using the same method of propulsion and operated by the same cars, for more that 90 years! Certainly this must be a world's record for city transit.

So, if Dark Passage was made in 1947, car 520 had been in operation for around 56 years - not a bad service life.

Was Harry's Wagon a White Front Car?

Car 990 began service 1 Aug 1933; pg 186

Over at Orange Crate Art there's an interesting post about a diner called Harry's Wagon that appeared in the 1947 noir Dark Passage. The movie is set in San Francisco, and stars Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

The diner reminded me of the streetcars in Charles Smallwood's The White Front Cars of San Francisco that was published by Interurbans in 1978*. Harry's was a real place, so I leafed through the book to see if by some wild chance Harry's Wagon might be in there amongst photos of repurposed cars. No dice. 

Naturally, the book is jammed full of streetcars that look quite similar to Harry's Wagon, but there's no obvious match, and no reference to that diner. One major difference: Harry's has a 4 window front, and all the similar streetcars had only 3. Maybe Harry's was reno-ed? Can't say for sure.

---

*I bought this book back in January after seeing an ad for it in an old issue of Railroad Model Craftsman. On a lark I looked for it online, and found one for $5 plus $10 shipping. I bit and the rest is reading history :-)

Hey doll, Welcome to Marwen

I was prepared to hate Robert Zemeckis' 2018 movie, Welcome to Marwen. The reviews seemed uniformly bad, and I had really enjoyed the documentary that it's based on. I saw the doc at the Mayfair soon after it was released, and liked it so much I bought the DVD, which I've watched a few times since then. I was prepared for a bad Hollywood-ization of a favourite movie. And I must admit that when I saw Welcome to Marwen's opening scene I started to slip into the hate zone. My worst preconceptions were being confirmed. But, I hung in, and in the end was glad I did.

Look, it's a Hollywood movie. By definition it's going to be structured with all of Hollywood's conventions and heavy-handed messaging because it's an entertainment being sold to a mass audience to hopefully make some big bucks. Once I got off my high-horse and reminded myself this was the reason it wasn't a shot-by-shot, stick-to-the-facts-ma'am homage to the documentary, I could watch it for what it had to offer, which was some interesting stuff.

What got me to start paying some respect were a couple of early low-key scenes where Zemeckis demonstrated some sympathy for those who model making and miniatures play a role in their lives. Mr. Hogancamp's situation is extreme, and maybe that's why he could be given a sympathetic and uncondescending airing, but this is a rare thing to see in popular media.

I got hooked when we got to the scene where Nichol comes over to see Marwen for the first time, interrupting a discussion between Mark and Roberta. Nichol looks around Marwen a bit, and begins to sum things up with a trite assumption about the town being part of a model railroad setup. Roberta quickly launches into a nuanced correction on what it's really about - we'll leave it for another time to unpack the whole "it's-only-a-model-railroad" thing :-)

Nichol comes back sometime later when she sees Mark sitting out by Marwen in a lawn chair. She casually wanders amongst the buildings noting their detailing and creativity, but then, upon turning a corner, takes a fateful glance at a contrasting scene of horror inside a building, and lets out a scream. Naturally, she asks Mark what it's all about, and - this is key - he quietly asks her if she really wants to know - he doesn't immediately launch into a nerd-fuelled speech - and upon her consent, begins to carefully explain. From there we're morphed into another of the movie's many signature CGI doll scenes, but the setup was important to making the doll action scenes viable and interesting. 

From that point I settled into the movie. Before, I had balked at the doll CGI stuff, but could now better appreciate how those scenes were being sympathetically used to make Mark's inner states clear. I was now finding the way the doll CGI scenes were interwoven into the live-action more interesting, and could dismiss the opening scene for the big pomposity that it was. And, let's face it, many of those doll scenes were good, pulp-influenced fun too, corny humour and all.

Maybe this movie wasn't meant for theatrical viewing, but is more oriented to watching at home. I suspect it might take on cult status as the years roll on. 

P.S. : I should also note, being a hobby shop aficionado, I was quite impressed by the one in the movie. There must be a lot of hobbyists in Mr. Hogancamp's town to support such a large, organized, and well stocked store :-)

P.P.S.: Be sure to watch the DVD's extra on how the special effects team recreated Marwencol. Mr. Hogancamp's had a folk art, DIY sensibility, but I guess it was too raw for an A movie, and a much slicker version was required that simulated a sanitized folk art, DIY sensibility.

Band of Outsiders: Paris, two men, one woman, and a convertible

Band of Outsiders isn’t a movie to watch for the story. Jack Webb could have easily distilled the plot and poured it into a half-hour episode of Dragnet or Adam-12 without losing any flavour. 1-Adam-12, 1-Adam-12, robbery in progress; two men, one woman in their twenties; one suspect armed; be on the look-out for dirty French convertible. What it is, is a movie for looking at and being amazed at what you’ll see. The setting is Paris in 1964 [1], shot on location in the streets, houses, fields, cafes, shops, businesses and the everyday world of the non-glamorous, work-a-day milieu of the Paris we don’t often see in movies. But Paris being Paris, this world is still something to behold. Paris isn’t just a backdrop in this movie, it’s a dynamic character that Godard and his human characters make full use of [2].

The Internet tells me this great dance sequence is famous.....

Now, don’t get me wrong, the human characters are just as attractive and dynamic. This isn’t a stodgy time-traveling documentary of a long gone Paris. Just don’t look to the characters to be stock types whose only jobs are to be puppets for moving the plot forward. 

... and inspired this equally famous one in Pulp Fiction.

Look at it this way, in passing I mentioned to Peter that this movie was a crime noir. He disagreed, and he was right, except for this one aspect: in Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels the plot is somewhat secondary, the action is in hanging out with Marlowe, driving L.A.'s freeways, visiting the seedy bars and clubs and houses and offices, questioning the perps, fighting the hard guys, getting slugged and escaping by the skin of your teeth just to wind up in the police chief's office with a bad head and hang-over and doing it all over on a couple hours sleep after some whiskey and scrambled eggs (and there's the dialogue, but we'll talk about that in a later post). The Band can be viewed in the same way: focus on what the people are doing and not so much on the plot, which is just a simple framework for hanging things together. This isn't high school, not caring about the plot isn't a problem, there isn't any test.

The only question left for me is: what is the convertible the leads are driving around in? Run it through a carwash, polish it up, slap on some mag wheels and it wouldn't be out-of-place on those L.A. freeways :-)

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Digressions

[1] Speaking of the mid-60's, these days this section from an E. L. Moore letter to Bill Rau in 1965 is stuck in my mind,

Yup, that’s just about the way I figured Mr. Zip. I got him down as Mr. Efficiency, which is not meant to be derogatory, but all editors get thataway and want to be as terse as possible and not waste any white space. But I am plumb tired of being dry and factual so I writ it just about as it went and you can tell Mr. Zip he oughta be thankful I didn’t stick a book review in the middle of it and maybe too a recipe for rhubarb pie ...

At its most general, it seems like a relatively untrod path in model railroading writing - branching out from purely instructional and progress report writing - and I'm trying my own experiments. This and a few others are in that vein. I don't know where this will go, but it seems like one way of exploring E. L. Moore's legacy and we'll see what happens.

[2] I've contended that E. L. Moore was a modeller who used model railroading as his story telling machine almost as if he were using it to create movies. Band is something of a lesson in this approach for streetcar layout builders. There aren't any streetcars in the movie, but it uses everything to tell the story. Buildings aren't just backdrops, but sources of action, much like in a E. L. Moore photo.

Samurai Blues

The Alta Vista TC was letting riders tag along on test runs through the new neighbourhoods. I figured I'd join them, but when I saw the video store at the Kilborn stop I got off and went to look through the stacks. I wasn't disappointed. On my way out I picked up a paper, flipped through to the entertainment section and saw a review of the disk I just rented. What a coincidence :-) 

Samurai Blues

All I've known about The Seven Samurai for most of my life is that it was influential in the making of Star Wars. I noticed Peter had it in stock and decided now was the time to watch. I did. It was great.

Maybe you were expecting a contrarian opinion to show how original I am because saying it was great sticks with the consensus view. It's hard to say anything new about a classic like this given the amount that has been written since its 1954 debut. My advice is: try not to read any of it; just watch. Do your reading after. I will note that the movie's around three-and-a-half hours long, so maybe consider watching over two evenings, or on a long Sunday afternoon. I started watching one evening after a particularly long day at work and began falling asleep around the one-hour mark. I decided to continue another night. Not because it was boring, but because I felt I was missing lots of good stuff - and I was. There's plenty of beautifully interwoven human interest, character studies, action, costumes, scenery and story to more than hold your attention for three-plus hours if you haven't spent the previous eight-plus in the 21st century work world.

There's a built-in five minute intermission around the hour-and-three-quarters mark, and I admit to sneaking off to find the iPad after taking a bathroom break. The internet reminded me that the 1960 western, The Magnificent Seven, was based on it, but wasn't well thought of. All I recall is that James Coburn was in it. I should watch it again to see if I can figure out why he stands out in my mind. But what I couldn't find was a reference to The Blues Brothers.

I guess when it comes to samurai my brain is fixated on John Belushi's Samurai Delicatessen from Saturday Night Live. Ok, maybe it was Samurai Belushi that flipped some brain circuit, but I couldn't stop thinking about parallels to The Blues Brothers. They both star John Belushi, but there's more than that. Let's look at some 'evidence'. 

1. There's a mission to be accomplished: The harvest of a village of farmers must be prevented from being stolen by marauding bandits vs Back taxes that must be paid on an orphanage to keep it from closing. 

2. A group of heroes must be assembled to accomplish the mission: Samurai are sought out and hired while the movie shows something of each's character vs Jake and Elwood's old band is sought out and re-assembled while the movie shows something of each's character. 

3. There're frequent displays of prowess: Fighting with samurai swords vs Playing and singing the blues.

4. There's an epic final deciding battle: The samurai defeat the bandits in a rainy epic battle in the streets of a 1586 Japanese farming village vs Jake and Elwood outwit the police in an epic of automotive carnage in the streets of 1980 Chicago.

5. But the victory is bitter sweet: Many Samurai are killed and the surviving samurai wonder if their victory was worth it for them vs The band winds up in jail. 

I submit the above for your consideration. No, the match isn't perfect, but the similarities are similar.*

John Belushi also stared in Samurai Optometrist and I think I need some new glasses before the next movie rolls :-)

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*You're right, the similarities, although similar, are an illusion. Many movies have this structure, but that doesn't imply their heritage can be traced back to The Seven Samurai. All I can say is in my mind, The Blues Brothers popped up for some reason only Sigmund Freud himself can figure out.

2001: A Yost-Verner Odyssey

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Saying it's a favourite film is something of an understatement, so my advice is if you have a chance to see it, don't pass it by.

Years ago I was a cog in a big bureaucracy. One of the ceremonies of life in that job was to hold one-on-one meetings with team members every two weeks. One afternoon at one of those meetings we got to talking about favourite science fiction movies. I mentioned 2001 was mine. My colleague hadn't heard of it. I said it came out in 1968, and explained a little about the story and why I liked it. His only response was he didn't watch movies that were made before he was born. I felt ready for the rocking-chair, but after the nausea passed, and I considered his comment further, I realized his response was odd, but understandable. And as it turns out, I've heard similar comments about 'old' movies from other people since then.

I probably would have had the same reaction to movies that predated my birth if I hadn't been raised on a steady diet of TVO's Saturday Night at the Movies and Magic Shadows during the '70s and '80s. Both were hosted by the legendary Elwy Yost. Saturday Night at the Movies, as the name says, was a movie program that aired on Saturday nights at 8. The show ran two movies over the course of the evening, usually with interviews of Hollywood directors and actors from the golden age between the two. I seem to recall the earliest shows tried to mimic an afternoon at a movie theatre in the '30s by also showing short features along with the double bill. I remember watching many sci-fi serial instalments with my father before the movies started. This was one of the few times we'd watch tv together, but he'd usually leave soon after the movies started.

When written down in black-and-white, the show doesn't sound that much different from lots of other time-filling movie shows that crammed the channels back then. The difference here was the host. Elwy Yost was highly knowledgeable about the movies, and through his genuine and enthusiastic presentation skills you knew he loved movies and wanted you to love them too. Without Elwy as my teacher I would never have come to love movies, especially so-called 'old movies'. I was lucky and got a real education.

Ok, so the '70s are rolling on and I'm getting my movie education and reading Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman with something akin to religious fervour, and then along comes D. Derek Verner's The Lido Theater in the March '76 issue of MR. This is not some namby-pamby kitbash, or folksy balsa build, this is real deal model making. There's photo-reduced signage, fibre optics, a custom machine that sits inside to create chase lighting, realistic detailing inside and out, casting 'neon' lighting, all presented in that long-gone sophisticated MR style. But back then it was too costly and time-consuming for me to build, so I had to admire it from afar.

So, here we are in the 21st century. Peter, who runs one of the only movie rental stores left on the planet just down the street from my house, is chatting with me about movies to watch in the Criterion Collection, and I'm awash in 2001 nostalgia with it's reminder that the tragic 2001 has come and gone years ago and the vision of that Kubrick and Clarke dream never materialized. But in that slurry of remembrance were some good memories of how I came to love movies and maybe should finally build a Yostian tribute theatre with some Verner inspired model making. Debra's telling me I should jump in as soon as the Airfix Gromit airplanes are done. Maybe so. I put it on my to-do list a long time ago - maybe this is the year.

When names from my model railroading past pop up I naturally make a beeline to Google. I didn't find a lot, but was surprised at what I did see. D. Derek Verner was the son of the famous magician, Dai Vernon, who, as it turns out, was born here in Ottawa in 1894 - 4 years before E. L. Moore. I found a 1999 documentary on YouTube called Dai Vernon: The Spirit of Magic. His life story is fascinating and disturbing. The movie is well worth watching. D. Derek Verner makes an early appearance around the 50 second mark and, along with his brother, provides insightful commentary throughout.

In the Model Railroader archive I found a brief biographical note about D. Derek Verner's model railroading activities in the Bull Session column of the January 1975 issue, but to get a sense of what his interests were, here's a list of his MR articles (I don't know if it's complete as he published a lot more than I had realized),

Lettering store windows, Sept '58

Modeling with fiber optics, Apr '73

Detail your interiors with a camera, July '73

Minicalculator: Tool for modeling, Jan '75

Vacuum de-airing for better casting, Sept '75

The Lido Theater, Mar '76

Deluxe cutting board, July '77

Zap-texturing for foliage, Sept '80

Shrink modeling, Nov '81

Modeling a campfire, Mar '85

Build a Dustroyer, June '85

How to simulate flickering fires, May '92

Light up the night with Neon, Aug '92

Painted power, Feb '93

A carload of sound, June '96

Video animation, Dec '96

You can see The Lido Theater was but one of many high quality projects. There's a lot of good reading there for me to catch up on. 

[24 Feb 2019 update: While reading through some old issues of Railroad Model Craftsman I found these two D. Derek Verner stories: A Block of Stores in the Feb '73 issue, and Modeling a chain-link fence in Aug '75]

I also found D. Derek Verner mentioned in a couple of Genii: The Conjurors' Magazine forum postings here and here. Summarizing them a bit, there's mention of a couple of electronics articles he wrote (although I suspect he published more than these),

Low, low cost intercom, Nov '65, Electronics Illustrated;

A Non-Serious Circuit, Apr '93, Popular Electronics;

and, sadly, there's discussion about alcoholism. He died in March 2016. I suspect there is much more to his life story than I've mentioned here.

I didn't see 2001 in '68 - I was too little to see it on my own. Frankly, I was only vaguely aware of it, and my parents weren't interested in that sort of thing. I finally saw it sometime in the mid-70s. I don't think I saw it on Saturday Night at the Movies - maybe I did - but it was likely on some crummy Dialing-for-Dollars '70s vintage tv on some long Sunday afternoon. I've watched it many times since then. And no, I didn't rent it from Peter. I still own my own copy on DVD.