2. ConFrancisco Media Report (comments by Mark R. Leeper):

Nearly each year Evelyn and I go to the World Science Fiction
convention. In 1976 at MidAmericon a then nearly unknown George
Lucas came presenting materials from his upcoming film STAR WARS.
While I would not rule out the possibility that it had been done
before, this was certainly the first example I saw of a filmmaker
using a science fiction convention like this. Starting that year
popular film seems to have changed a lot in its pacing and also how
it is merchandised. And one way is that more and more upcoming
films seem to have previewed at science fiction conventions.

Over the years I have seen two major changes in these
presentations. The first change is that rather than one filmmaker
at presenting his own film, there were package presentations at
which some "hired gun" who had sold his services to the studios
would be presenting a whole package of films--sometimes from
different studios. The other change was somewhat more subjective.
The films seem more derivative and--well, lets admit it--much less
exciting.

This year things are looking up ever-so-slightly. There is one
upcoming television show that looks decent--actually, better than
decent. But there is a lot coming up that I for one am going to be
less than excited about. You can read that to mean that they look
cheap, derivative, and way too much like things that have been bad
in the past.

In the media presentation there were several teasers for the
television series LOIS AND CLARK. So far the cleverest thing I
have seen about the series is the title, though I suspect some of
the audience will not recognize the allusion to the famous
expedition. Of course when I say that is the cleverest thing I
have seen, it is about all I have seen. The whole presentation was
three teasers implying that Lois Lane and Clark Kent would end up
in bed with each other. Presumably it should be obvious that there
are logic problems inherent in this inter-species coupling. Also
poor Lois would probably be badly damaged by the man whose flesh is
harder than steel. The same idea was explored in detail in the
Larry Niven story "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex." My enthusiasm
for the concept of sexy Superman stories is highly bounded.

Similarly we saw little more than teasers about SEAQUEST DSV, an
expensive new series set in the ocean starring Roy Scheider and
something that looks a lot like a rubber Flipper stand-in. There
is lots of nice looking hardware but no sign that anything of great
value will come from the program. Steven Spielberg is producing.

And speaking of famous people with initials S.S. (hey, I am admired
for my clever transitions) Sylvester Stallone looks like he is
aiming for TERMINATOR with his DEMOLITION MAN, but it sounds like
he will end up closer to FREEJACK. The concept is that the worst
criminal in all the world (played by Wesley Snipes) is captured by
a reckless, but effective cop nicknamed the "Demolition Man"
(played by Sylvester Stallone). Unfortunately a bunch of innocent
people are killed in the process. So both criminal and cop are
sentenced to cryogenic suspension--freezing. (Moral: In a topsy-
turvy world, a good cop is treated like a criminal.) For Stallone
the sentence is just some fifteen years in the freezer which
implies the congealing of all that body oil into grease. For
Snipes the sentence is eternity. It is not entirely clear why
waste the freezer space on someone who is never going to thaw, but
I guess there are precedents. (Also I guess some of the stuff at
the back of our freezer at home is in pretty much the same state.)
Flash forward some long time to a pristine and crimeless future--
don't ask me how we got there from our present with ever-growing
numbers of criminals, bad inner cities, racism, and ever-increasing
library overdue incidents. Society is too effete to handle real
crime, but through a nasty freezer accident Snipes escapes and is
terrorizing utopia. Luckily were have a macho greaseball on ice in
the fridge. It's at times like this that society learns to value
it's macho greaseballs. (Incidentally, all of this was in a
trailer I had seen weeks earlier at my neighborhood theater, and
there was nothing in this tacky presentation I didn't already
know.) This is not a film to look forward too.

We saw a trailer and little more for ROBOCOP 3 and what we saw made
it look like little more than the mindless shoot-em-up that ROBOCOP
2 was. This time the evil system is against Robo and has made him
a criminal. (Moral: In a topsy-turvy world, the good robocop is
treated like a criminal.) I don't expect much here. Incidentally,
Peter Weller is replaced by someone I could not recognize under the
makeup, but he wasn't Weller or probably anyone else well-known.

One of the longest running of the great super-heroes is Lamont
Cranston, who learned in the orient the ability to cloud people's
minds so that he is essentially invisible. When he is invisible he
is his alter-ego, The Shadow. Now nobody ever really knows what
The Shadow really looks like since he was a hero of radio and pulp
magazines. All you ever see is an artist conception of a man with
a long crooked nose under a big concealing hat. It's enough to
give you the willies. It is tough to judge who would make a good
Shadow on the screen in the upcoming Shadow film. Basil Rathbone
is pretty close, he might give you the heebie-jeebies if he was
hiding somewhere in the shadows. Maybe they should get some
unknown for the part in the film. But an unknown would give you no
marquee value I guess. So instead got the modern equivalent of
Basil Rathbone, the man with the commanding presence, with the deep
voice, with the slightly scary looks. Yes, they cast as Lamont
Cranston... Alec Baldwin??? (Oh barf! Well I guess he would be
marginally better in the role than Julia Roberts.) We did see some
production sketches on this one and the production seems to be in
the hands of people who would rather emulate successful films about
Batman than to try to understand the persona of the Shadow. At
least one mistake: in the long-running radio show, which is where
the Shadow became best known, all of his powers and all of his
tools came from between his ears. He had no special cars or gas
pistols. Everything he did was by mental powers. Well we saw a
sketch of his office where an iris opens up and his chair sinks
down when he wants to make a getaway unseen. As if he couldn't
walk out right in front of his secretary and simply cloud her mind.
He is, after the Shadow. Or he was before they started the film.
Mechanical gimmicks are right for Batman but all wrong for the
Shadow.

Oh, and speaking of weird casting, Stan Winston, an Oscar winner
for special effects like those of JURASSIC PARK was on hand to
defend the casting of Tom Cruise as the Vampire Lestat in INTERVIEW
WITH THE VAMPIRE. He talked for a long time about the film but at
the same time said very little. He had brought a slide of what
Cruise will look like as Lestat, but could not show it since it
might be videotaped and of course it must be kept in extreme
secrecy for whatever reason filmmakers always like extreme secrecy.
I guess there is some danger that some other filmmaker will cast
Cruise as Lestat in some other film and use the same makeup. In
any case we heard how *great* Cruise was as Lestat, but learned
little else of value.

Lest it sound like there was nothing good to look forward to in
upcoming productions, J. Michael Straczynski was present to show
what was coming up for BABYLON 5. I want everyone to remember that
after the pilot was broadcast, it was me who said that I was
willing to trade two episodes of any "Star Trek" series for any one
episode of BABYLON 5. Reactions to the pilot were very mixed, but I
was really impressed by what I was seeing. I am already preparing
to say "I told ya' so." I would now say that the two for one trade
underrates "BABY 5" (as I have nicknamed the series, without loss
of respect). We saw about twenty minutes from one of the episodes
and forget the series, I really want to know how the episode will
come out. It involves a conflict between two species, one good,
one evil. The problem is that you can only determine which is the
good species and which one is evil if you know if the spirit dies
with the body or if souls are somehow reincarnated to live again.
And BABY 5 isn't going to tell you. It seems like a lot of the
episodes are going to hinge on philosophical principles that the
viewer is going to have to decide for him/ herself. Straczynski
says his goal is to start arguments and perhaps a few good bar
fights with his series. It has been a while since we have seen
science fiction sophisticated enough to do that. The British do
that at least on occasion, but American SF in film and television
seems to have the flash of effects but rarely the spark of any real
intelligence.

Of course BABY 5 will have its "toaster graphics" which certainly
are impressive. They substitute a sort of artistic feeling for the
realism of effects that the current "Star Trek" shows seem to use.
The effects in BABY 5 look more like animations of the book covers
use, particularly British ones. They are imaginative and for the
time being it is very impressive to see sights like spaceships
unfolding solar sails like giant metallic insects. I would say,
however, that the novelty of that sort of effect is bound to wear
off over the projected five-year run of BABY 5. This is
particularly true since "video toaster graphics," the kind used in
BABY 5 are a lot cheaper than those created by Industrial Light and
Magic, and BABY 5 has no exclusive on them. That means we are
probably going to see similar effects very commonly. The special
effects are not going to be that much of a draw after the first six
months, but I think that the story will be. I am just a little
concerned about a series that is going to be hard to join in the
middle because of what the viewer has already missed. For now I
intend to watch faithfully and I suspect that once the series gets
going, I will not be alone.