This was a weekend of studio Holiday Parties. Saw a lot of old friends and made a number of new ones.


matte painting from the Wizard of Oz-1939

Monday night the Motion Picture Academy Science and Technology Council had a wonderful evening entitled FANTASTIC REALITY: THE MAGIC AND MYSTERY OF MOVIE MATTE PAINTING. It was an all star evening of the greatest living practioners matte painting and art direction. Craig Barron, who himself painted scenes for Empire Strikes, Back, to Batman Returns to Zodiac went through the history of the art from the earliest days to the present with panelists,
Harrison Ellenshaw, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1954) Star Wars (1977)
Chris Evans- ET (1982) Dragonslayer( 1981) Jurassic Park (1993) The Ring (2002)
John Knoll Star Wars Phantom Menace (1999), both Pirates of the Caribbean movies and he co-created with his brother a little program you may have heard of called PHOTOSHOP.
Bill Taylor- Effects great since John Carpenter’s Dark Star, and a founder of the Visual Effects Society.
Matthew Yuricich, who since 1950 worked on Forbidden Planet (1956), North By Northwest (1959), Ben Hur (1959) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind(1977)

Harrison Ellenshaw told a great story about how for the movie Spartacus, his father Peter Ellenshaw executed a brilliant establishing shot of Imperial Rome. The temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus atop the Capitoline Hill with bustling crowds in the Forum, all in perfect detail. But the producers worried if the audiences would get it, so they printed over the center of the painting a huge white khyron (title) reading ROME. Ellenshaw was more than annoyed when he saw the final:" Where the heck else do you think it is..?!"

On hand in the audience was Bob Boyle, Alfred Hitchcock’s art director on the Birds (1963) was there and a wonderful display of easels, paints and matte paintings from Spartacus, Forbidden Planet and the Wicked Witch of the West’s Castle in the Wizard of Oz (1939).

Matthew Yuricich told many wonderful anecdotes of the older eccentric department heads at MGM and Selznick. One artist used to wipe his brushes on the bald head of his cameraman, another used to pee in a film can so he didn’t need to take a break. He mentioned on Ben Hur he had to paint his paintings “Squeezed”, meaning he had to take into account that the wide screen lens would stretch out his paintings to football field size. So he painted them by eye, accounting for the distortion.

A lot of top artists from Dreamworks and Disney were there to see their heroes speak.
My compliments to Andy and all the Sci-Tech gang for another great show. It was a fun evening paying tribute to artists who rarely get recognized for their amazing technique. After all, as Harrison Ellenshaw said: “ If someone compliments your paintings, it meant you failed. The best work is invisible.”


Craig Barron wrote a great book called THE INVISIBLE ART richly illustrated with all these great works. A great Xmas present for all the budding filmmakers out there. After uh…. You buy MY book of course…

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Quiz: Did Vikings wear horned helmets?

Answer to yesterday's question below: Hitler’s Germany called itself the Third Reich. What were the first two?

History for 12/11/2007
Birthdays: Sir David Brewster,1781- inventor of the kaleidoscope, Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert Koch, conquerer of tuberculosis, Alexander Solzhenitsin, Carlo Ponti, Gilbert Roland, Big Mama Mabel Thornton, Jean Marais, Jean Louis Tritignant, Tom Hayden, Jermaine Jackson, McCoy Tyner- John Coltrane's pianist, singer Brenda Lee, Rita Moreno, Teri Garr

711AD- death of Byzantine Emperor Justinian II Rhino-Nose.

1785-French artist Jean Baptiste Greuze was well known for making popular paintings of simple scenes like Young Girl Weeping For Her Dead Bird. This day he went to the Paris police prefect and accused his wife Gabriele Babuti of “Persistently receiving lovers into his home over his protests, stealing large sums of his money and trying to batter in his head with a chamber pot.”He was granted a legal separation.

1793- Last July when the French Revolutionary Convention heard of the assassination of their great radical leader Jean Paul Marat one delegate called out “David ! We Need You!” This day Jacques David unveiled his painting THE DEATH OF MARAT for the first time.

1816- Indiana admitted to the union.

1882- The Bijou Theater in Boston presented Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe in the first show completely illuminated by electric light bulbs.

1926- Josephine Baker performed her banana dance in Amsterdam.

1927- THE LADY VANISHES- 35 year old mystery writer Agatha Christie caused a mystery herself when she disappeared, leaving her car abandoned by a local brook. The search for the body sensationalized the London press, even knocking the death of Eduard Manet off the front page. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle employed the first use of a police psychic. Finally after a week Mrs Christie turned up at a health spa in Yorkshire. She was depressed when she earned her husband Sir Archibald Christie of the Guards was having an affair with a younger lady. She ran off and registered in the hotel using her younger rivals name as her alias- Mrs Neal.

1929- Frenchman Charles Cros patented a searchlight he declared he would use to signal civilizations on Mars and Venus. Nobody's returned the call yet.

1936- In a dramatic speech broadcast on radio British King Edward VIII abdicated his throne to be with "The Woman I Love" - to marry the American divorcee' Wallace Simpson. He had been king of the British Empire for 325 days. His brother George became George VI, the father of the present Elizabeth II. He and Wallace later became Duke and Duchess of Windsor and lived outside of England for the rest of their lives.
The Nazis had planned after they had conquered England to put Edward back on the throne as a puppet. Edward Windsor never quite dismissed the rumors that he secretly sympathized with Nazis ideology and while governor of Bermuda had many parties and dinners with socialites who were known Nazi intelligence agents. After the Windsors died their French chateau was purchased by Mohammed Al Fayed, the father of Princess Diana’s boyfriend Dodie Al Fayed.

1941- Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States, honoring their Tripartite axis pact with Japan. Hermann Goering protested to Hitler that the Japanese had so far not been of any help to them, they refused to declare war on Russia. Why invite another mighty foe? Hitler sniffed:’ The Americans will be our enemies eventually, why wait?”

1946- UNICEF formed.

1957- Rock and Roll singer Jerry Lee Lewis secretly married his 13 year old cousin Myra Gail Brown, while still married to his second wife, who he divorced her when the press broke the story the following April. The incident shot down his meteoric career. Great Balls of Fire!

1964- Soul music star Sam Cooke was shot to death in an argument with a lady who ran an L.A. motel he had brought his girlfriend to.( "Darling you send meee...")

1967- The Concorde SST passenger plane is unveiled in Toulouse. It was a joint venture between England and France. The American SST project was scrapped as too expensive.

1968- Just point your browser and click! Dr. Douglas Englehardt invented the computer Mouse.

1970- Walt Disney's the 'Aristocats'.

1978- THE LUFTHANSA HEIST.- Some small time Brooklyn Mafiosi slipped into the Lufthansa cargo terminal at Kennedy Airport and stole $8 million in unmarked bills and jewelry, most from European money exchange booths. As the FBI moved in on the gang it’s members tended to wind up dead, thirteen bodies in all. The money was never recovered and the reputed mastermind Jimmy the Gent Burke died in prison on an unrelated murder charge in 1991. The incident was dramatized in the Martin Scorcese film “Goodfellas”.

1985- A Sacramento computer rental store owner named Hugh Scrutton became the first to get a mail bomb from the Unibomber. MIT advanced mathematics major Ted Kusczynski slowly became mentally unbalanced and blamed rampant technology for ruining the world. His campaign of mailing explosives terrorized the academic world for a decade until he was turned in by his own brother.
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Yesterday's question: Hitler’s Germany called itself the Third Reich. What were the first two?

Answer: In 954AD, Otto Von Hohenstaufen was crowned by the Pope Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation. This loosely knit collection of German elector states was considered the First Reich. By Napoleon's time is existed barely on paper and disappeared in 1807. In 1871 When Wilhelm Ist was crowned Kaiser, that was the Second. That empire collapsed in the German defeat in the Great War in 1918.