Spare Parts — The Real Story

Posted on January 15, 2015 at 8:00 am

If it did not actually happen, no one would believe it. Four undocumented high school students with no money entered an underwater robotics competition, decided to compete against the college teams instead of the other high schools, and won, triumphing over past winner MIT, which had not only some of the top engineering students in the world but a budget more than 20 times bigger.

Wired Magazine wrote the story in 2004. It is well worth a read — the real story is even more improbable and exciting than the film, which is fine, but which adds some unnecessary Hollywood sweeteners, combining the two teacher/sponsors into one character played by George Lopez and adding some superfluous backstory and romance for him. One unforgettable detail from real life becomes one of the movie’s high points. No spoilers here — I’ll just say that the kids had to act quickly to find something small and super-absorbent when their machine had a leak and they came up with an ingenious solution.

Wired also has updates on what the team members are doing now.

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The Real Story

If Bilbo Had a Lawyer….

Posted on January 25, 2013 at 8:00 am

James Daily writes intensive, witty, and very astute analyses of the legal issues raised in feature films. I love his piece on the 5-foot long contract between Bilbo Baggins and the dwarves in “The Hobbit.” Here’s a sample on the very important legal principle of “consideration” (which means that there has to be some sort of exchange).

Here, Bilbo is promising to go with the Company to the Lonely Mountain and performing various services there, including extracting the treasure, plus a few more services we’ll get to later. In turn, as we shall see, the Company promises to pay Bilbo one fourteenth of the profits, plus a few other obligations. Thus we have “a promise for a promise,” otherwise known as a bilateral contract.

There are some other details to notice in these clauses. One is the use of defined terms (e.g. “referred to hereinafter as Burglar”). The parties to a contract may define terms however they wish, even in ways that contradict the definition used in statutes or regulations.

This is important in this case because of the use of the defined term “Burglar.” Contracts to do something illegal are ordinarily unenforceable (e.g. collecting on an illegal gambling debt). But here what matters is not that the parties used the word ‘burglar’ but rather what sort of meaning they assigned to that defined term. As we shall see, the contract doesn’t require Bilbo to do anything illegal (or at least not obviously illegal), and so the contract will probably not fail for use of a questionable term.

And then there are the liability waivers, the non-disclosure agreement, and the provision for binding arbitration! The write-up on the tax consequences of Clark Kent’s decision to leave The Daily Planet to be a blogger is pretty good, too!

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Argo: The Real Story of the Crazy CIA Caper to Rescue Six Americans in Iran

Posted on October 8, 2012 at 8:00 am

The employees of the US embassy in Iran were taken hostage in 1979, but six escaped and were hidden by the Canadian ambassador and his wife. A CIA “exfiltration” expert worked with the Canadian government and some Hollywood talent to create fake identities as members of a Canadian film crew scouting locations for the six Americans. The story was classified for many years (the CIA agent even had to give back his medal), but it is now public. This week, Ben Affleck directs and stars in “Argo,” based on the rescue mission. Affleck and the real-life former spook, Tony Mendez, were interviewed by Entertainment Weekly.

“I’ve spent my whole life trying to be boring,” Mendez said. “As an operative, you don’t want to be caught on camera. And here I am watching Ben on a big screen saying, ‘My name is Tony Mendez.’ That really is weird….The movie is so well-done that I felt exactly like I was back there.” You can catch the “boring” Mendez in the movie if you look carefully.

The story first came to light in a Wired Magazine article in 2007. As the movie acknowledges in its conclusion, there were some dramatic liberties taken with the facts. But the most outlandish aspects of the story really happened. Mendez had worked with Hollywood experts before on make-up and disguises, so he had some contacts. Mendez, using the name Kevin Harkin, really did set up a film production company that could credibly be scouting locations for a wild sci-fi/fantasy film.

In just four days, Mendez, Chambers, and Sidell created a fake Hollywood production company. They designed business cards and concocted identities for the six members of the location-scouting party, including all their former credits. The production company’s offices would be set up in a suite at Sunset Gower Studios on what was formerly the Columbia lot, in a space vacated by Michael Douglas after he finished The China Syndrome.

All they needed now was a film — and Chambers had the perfect script. Months before, he had received a call from a would-be producer named Barry Geller. Geller had purchased the rights to Roger Zelazny’s science fiction novel, Lord of Light, written his own treatment, raised a few million dollars in starting capital from wealthy investors, and hired Jack Kirby, the famous comic book artist who cocreated X-Men, to do concept drawings. Along the way, Geller imagined a Colorado theme park based on Kirby’s set designs that would be called Science Fiction Land; it would include a 300-foot-tall Ferris wheel, voice-operated mag-lev cars, a “planetary control room” staffed by robots, and a heated dome almost twice as tall as the Empire State Building. Geller had announced his grand plan in November at a press conference attended by Jack Kirby, former football star and prospective cast member Rosey Grier, and several people dressed like visitors from the future. Shortly thereafter, Geller’s second-in-command was arrested for embezzling production funds, and the Lord of Light film project evaporated.

Since Chambers had been hired by Geller to do makeup for the film, he still had the script and drawings at his house. The story, a tale of Hindu-inspired mystical science fiction, took place on a colonized planet. Iran’s landscape could provide many of the rugged settings required by the script. A famous underground bazaar in Tehran even matched one of the necessary locations. “This is perfect,” Mendez said. He removed the cover and gave the script a new name, Argo — like the vessel used by Jason on his daring voyage across the world to retrieve the Golden Fleece.

The new production company outfitted its office with phone lines, typewriters, film posters and canisters, and a sign on the door: studio six productions, named for the six Americans awaiting rescue. Sidell read the script and sketched out a schedule for a month’s worth of shooting. Mendez and Chambers designed a full-page ad for the film and bought space in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. The night before Mendez returned to Washington, Studio Six threw a small party at the Brown Derby, where they toasted their “production” and Mendez grabbed some matchbooks as additional props to boost his Hollywood bona fides. Shortly thereafter, the Argo ads appeared, announcing that principal photography would commence in March. The film’s title was rendered in distressed lettering against a black background. Next to it was a bullet hole. Below it was the tagline “A Cosmic Conflagration.”

New Yorkers can see some of the actual artifacts from what was called “The Canadian Caper” on display at Discovery Times Square, including the script for the fake movie. One of the State Department officials who was rescued wrote about what the movie gets right and wrong in Slate. My favorite footnote: in an interview with Joshuah Bearman, the reporter who wrote the first story about the declassified details, he says that the fake “Studio 6” production company set up by Mendez and named for the six Americans they were trying to rescue actually received 26 scripts, including one from Steven Spielberg!

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Spies The Real Story

Coraline’s Special Effects

Posted on February 22, 2009 at 12:00 pm

Wired Magazine has a fascinating story about the breathtaking special effects in “Coraline.” In an era when we are used to astonishingly “true” images generated by computers, the old-school charms of this stop-motion movie, where everything you see was actually there being photographed, enhanced with ground-breaking 3D technology, is entrancingly tactile. A painstaking process meant that no more than 2-4 seconds a day were completed, with thousands of tiny adjustments in each scene. The title character’s 200,000 facial expressions, required 350 top plates for her eyebrows and forehead and 700 bottom plates for her mouth.

It’s the stunningly inventive DIY visual effects that director Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) used to bring the story to life. A quarter-million pieces of popcorn are transformed into cherry blossoms, superglue and baking soda are whipped into snow, and black fishing line becomes creepy chest hair.

coraline garden.jpg

In all, the crew hand-built 150 sets and 250 jointed puppets, as well as plants and toys with countless moving parts. “What makes this film different,” says Tom Proost, one of the art directors, “is that everything is real and everything moves.”

Every detail is brilliantly imagined and brilliantly executed. I love the way they created the steam from a tea kettle: cotton spritzed with hair spray. I’ve seen the film twice and plan to go back again just to see the extraordinary garden and theater scenes and to catch some of the many details I know I have missed.

Wired’s 25th Anniversary Tribute to ‘Wargames’

Posted on August 2, 2008 at 8:00 am

I recently included War Games in my list of great movie computers. Wired Magazine has a fascinating salute to the movie’s 25th anniversary and the way it influenced a generation of proto-geeks in the current issue, featuring interviews with the screenwriters (and the legendary hackers they consulted) about developing a script centering on this still-exotic technology. And they actually considered casting John Lennon as the designer of the computer program! Even more astonishing was the impact the film had on one very powerful viewer, the President of the United States.

Days after the screening, wrote Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon, Reagan held a closed-door briefing with some moderate members of Congress, wherein he sidetracked discussion of the MX ballistic missile program by bringing up “WarGames.” Had any of them seen the film? he asked, then launched into an animated account of the plot. “Don’t tell the ending,” cautioned one of the lawmakers.

The Defense Department was so taken with the display system created for the movie that they designed one like it. But if the movie raised the consciousness of those creating defense systems, it also made them warier of those who might try to hack into them. Kevin Mitnick, who served five years in prison for hacking says,

That movie had a significant effect on my treatment by the federal government. I was held in solitary confinement for nearly a year because a prosecutor told a judge that if I got near a phone, I could dial up Norad and launch a nuclear missile. I never hacked into Norad. And when the prosecutor said that, I laughed — in open court. I thought, “This guy just burned all his credibility.” But the court believed it. I think the movie convinced people that this stuff was real. They tried to make me into a fictional character.

There’s a new 25th Anniversary Edition DVD with some excellent features and interviews.