Laurel Canyon

[Belligerent Savant]

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interview with Dave McGowan [after the first couple minutes of techno blips and imagery] Re: Laurel Canyon --

[robotilt]

McGowan interviewed by Deanna Spingola from 6/9/2011: feed://www.republicbroadcasting.org/podcasts.active.php?programID=81

[Brentos]

Nice to see Dave McGowan updating his site again. I also whole-heartedly love his apollo critiques.

[justdrew]

well, I just finally watched Vanishing Point

(unfortunately now I have to watch the UK version, which I wish I had known to see instead in the first place. )

I'm guessing he wanted to get to frisco by 3 as that's the anniversary of when his girlfriend had drowned five years before? Anyway, a great movie!

anyone see the gawdfersaken '97 made-for-tv remake?


that song was in the soundtrack to VP but also Roger Corman's Gas-s-s-s....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas-s-s-s

[Stephen Morgan]

well, I just finally watched Vanishing Point

(unfortunately now I have to watch the UK version, which I wish I had known to see instead in the first place. )

Hmm. Didn't know there was a UK version.

I'm guessing he wanted to get to frisco by 3 as that's the anniversary of when his girlfriend had drowned five years before? Anyway, a great movie!

anyone see the gawdfersaken '97 made-for-tv remake?

Yes, that's the one with Aragorn, isn't it? And the naked-woman-on-motorbike is in a star-and-stripes bikini, and the blind black DJ fellah is replaced by some Alex Jones style patriot. Very much a Vanishing Point for the 90s. And, of course, to remove all that nasty subtlety, they have the woman being in childbirth, which is why he's in a rush, they don't have him taking drugs, and they have the woman die at the end leading to his suicide. The original was better.

[semper occultus]

Have to say I prefer Zabriskie Point though .....

[annie aronburg]

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interview with Dave McGowan [after the first couple minutes of techno blips and imagery] Re: Laurel Canyon --

I wish McGowan had brought notes to the interview, he sounded vague. It sounded more like two old hippies telling each other ghost stories than a presentation of serious research.

[justdrew]

Have to say I prefer Zabriskie Point though .....

I've always wondered if they blew up that house for real? It sure looked real.

[annie aronburg]

It was sort of real.

http://www.museumofcinema.com/2011/03/0 ... ioni-film/

The following is part of the production notes for Zabriskie Point featured in its press kit during its original USA release. This particular production note contains some spoilers as it discusses the explosion of the replicated Carl Hovgard house in the Phoenix area that was shot with 17 cameras that captured over two hours of footage that Antonioni had to choose from.

FULL-SCALE LUXURY HOME MODEL BUILT FOR DESTRUCTION IN ANTONIONI FILM

Long before the cast and crew of “Zabriskie Point” ever reached Carefree, a luxurious new housing development in the Arizona desert near Phoenix, the local citizens knew something out of the ordinary was happening in their parts.

Over the weeks they had noticed a house being built several hundred yards off the main highway. As its form became more definite, they were astonished to see that it was an exact duplicate of the newest and most talked about dwelling in the Phoenix area, the $400,000 home of Carl Hovgard, tax research expert and founder of the Research Institute of America. However, they soon learned that only the exterior was being duplicated. The interior was just a skeleton.

Although an aura of secrecy surrounded the project, some well-placed questions brought out a few facts: Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni was making a movie for MGM and had received permission from the Hovgards to shoot inside their real house while they were vacationing. The model home would be entirely destroyed at some point in the shooting.

Since Antonioni never reveals too much about his movies while he is shooting them, the only thing local people ever learned was that the Hovgard house was to serve as the meeting place for a group of businessmen, headed by actor Rod Taylor. All of the people involved in the transaction were fabulously wealthy and the place in which they are meeting had to reflect their wealth and their taste. No one was told why the house had to be destroyed — only that it happened, in the mind of “Zabriskie Point’s” leading actress Daria Halprin.

The mock-up was built in eight weeks by an MGM construction crew. A good deal of the material used in the original house was incorporated including a concrete slab roof, individually cast concrete blocks and stone for the entire front of the house. It cost more than $100,000.

But its life was short. Filled with dynamite and gallons of gas and benzine, the house was guarded carefully and the exact time of the explosion was revealed to no one. Still, many local people lined the highway in front of the house in the late afternoon of demolition day.

In ten seconds two-and-a-half-months’ worth of work vanished although it took hours for the fire to completely die out. There were, miraculously, no injuries and all 17 cameras operated perfectly. Michelangelo Antonioni would have two hours of footage from which to choose a few seconds for his crucial scene.

[semper occultus]

[Freitag]

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interview with Dave McGowan [after the first couple minutes of techno blips and imagery] Re: Laurel Canyon --

...

I wish McGowan had brought notes to the interview, he sounded vague. It sounded more like two old hippies telling each other ghost stories than a presentation of serious research.

That's what all McGowan's interviews sound like

[justdrew]

It was sort of real.

http://www.museumofcinema.com/2011/03/0 ... ioni-film/

The following is part of the production notes for Zabriskie Point featured in its press kit during its original USA release. This particular production note contains some spoilers as it discusses the explosion of the replicated Carl Hovgard house in the Phoenix area that was shot with 17 cameras that captured over two hours of footage that Antonioni had to choose from.

FULL-SCALE LUXURY HOME MODEL BUILT FOR DESTRUCTION IN ANTONIONI FILM

...

In ten seconds two-and-a-half-months’ worth of work vanished although it took hours for the fire to completely die out. There were, miraculously, no injuries and all 17 cameras operated perfectly. Michelangelo Antonioni would have two hours of footage from which to choose a few seconds for his crucial scene.

I think he should release all two hours in HD

[Belligerent Savant]

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interview with Dave McGowan [after the first couple minutes of techno blips and imagery] Re: Laurel Canyon --

...

I wish McGowan had brought notes to the interview, he sounded vague. It sounded more like two old hippies telling each other ghost stories than a presentation of serious research.

That's what all McGowan's interviews sound like

Which is unfortunate, as you'd expect him to expound a bit more, go into more detail, etc, when being interviewed; doesn't seem to match the content of his written words [once removing the obnoxious -- though at times quite hilarious -- sarcasm]

[norton ash]

I used to think this song was groovy
But now it just sounds kinda pervy
So call us old and call us dirty
'Cause the Canyon girls are 12 and we're like 30

Jeff, the karaoke's fucked up again!

[82_28]

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interview with Dave McGowan [after the first couple minutes of techno blips and imagery] Re: Laurel Canyon --

I wish McGowan had brought notes to the interview, he sounded vague. It sounded more like two old hippies telling each other ghost stories than a presentation of serious research.

That's how all the best shit gets hashed out. Listening to people who talk "like that" are precisely who the best teachers have always been. Then you simply go back to his writing and can see, he's just a touch more free with his conversational skills than others, but can write, speculate, think and research circles around 99.99% of humanity. I thought his "delivery" was human and honest.