Weirdhouse Cinema: Beyond the Mind’s Eye

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe explore the mind-bending, non-narrative CGI acid trip that is 1992’s “Beyond the Mind’s Eye,” directed by Michael Boydstun and featuring the music of Jan Hammer. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House
Cinema we're doing something a little bit different. Most of
the time we focus on narrative feature films, at least
within the weird genres. But today we are not looking
at a narrative feature film. We're going to be talking
about an anthology format art film from nineteen ninety two

(00:41):
called Beyond the Mind's Eye, which was the second part
in a series of similar films beginning in the year
nineteen ninety with The Mind's Eye, a computer animation odyssey. Now,
as the name implies, the Mind's Eye films were showcases
computer animation, showcases for sort of the cutting edge of

(01:04):
computer based animation techniques of the day, and the typical
format of all these films in the Mind's Eye series
would be a sequence of musical numbers usually I think,
just by a single artist throughout, accompanied by strange computer
generated imagery scenes and imagery. Now, Rob, I don't know

(01:26):
if you were able to get more clarity on the
source of all of these animated segments. One thing that's
clear is that a lot of the segments were created
for other projects originally, things like TV commercials, sci fi movies,
video games, demo reels, just industry stuff and so forth,
and then a lot of that was edited together and

(01:47):
set to music for these projects. But I don't know
if that's the case with all of the animation or
just some of it. It's possible some segments were created
specifically for the mind S Eye movies, but I couldn't
get a clear answer on that.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, this is one of those situations where the movie
database listings for this title, beyond the mind side that
we're going to be talking about here today, seem kind
of limited. Now, I will add that the actual credits
for the feature itself. I mean, those credits do provide
a lot of names and a lot more of additional info.

(02:23):
But I feel like to really cite everything and to
source and to point to the source of everything that
we see in the picture, you're dealing with like a
true sort of multi media archaeology, sort of an exercise
that we're we were not really all about here with
Weird House Cinema. So we're going to call out some
of the people that were involved, but we can't possibly

(02:46):
list everyone because again this is an anthology all these
different films, films that, especially for the time period, often
involved like multiple folks bringing it together from a technological
in ar two stick standpoint.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, that's right. So I wonder I bet a lot
of you out there listening remember The Mind's Eye if
you were around and watching TV, reading, reading Wired magazine
in the early nineties or something. The Mind's Eye films
were apparently extremely popular on home video. I never rented
one when I was a kid, but I've had friends

(03:21):
mentioned them before, like, oh, remember the Mind's Eye, Like
you know, I'm I'm maybe somebody said they rented it
from Blockbuster or something. But anyway, they were very popular
on home video, initially on VHS and on laser disc
and then later on DVD, and I can only imagine
the number of hangouts cool hangouts in the early nineties
that began, like dude, you've got to come over and

(03:43):
watch this tape I rented. It's so trippy. And so
that's the series. But again, the specific film that we're
going to be talking about today is the second movie
in the Mind's I series, called Beyond The Mind's I
from nineteen ninety two, directed by Michael Boydston and featuring
music by Yan Hamer, who I know on the podcast before,

(04:07):
I've probably called Jan Hammer, but it's Jon Hamer. I
found out by listening to an interview. So when I
got the idea to do one of these one of
the Mind's Eye movies for the show, I was browsing
through a list of them and I saw one was
by one Head, music by Yon Hamer, and I knew
we had to pick the hammer fest. It had to
be that one.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah. Yeah, Listeners to Weird House Cinema will remember that
Jon Hammer scored the film I Come In Peace aka
Dark Angel that we previously talked about on the show,
and most famously, of course, did the soundtrack for Miami Vice,
including that absurdly great track Crockets theme. But anyway, we'll
come back to jon 'hammer in a bit and we'll

(04:47):
talk about him a lot, because basically this is a
film where his music is his front and center. Really,
I mean, it's the visuals and then the music of
Yon Hamer, and that what beyond the Mind's Eye consists.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Of, Yeah, now, whatever is going through your head right now?
Out there listening in the year twenty twenty four. Whatever
you are thinking about the idea of a combination art
house showcase and industrial demo reel entirely made out of
CGI from the early nineties, you do need to probably
shift your thinking a little bit, like, especially if you

(05:24):
weren't around at the time and don't like you can't
tap into that mindset again, because people in the nineties
were absolutely losing their minds about how astounding, futuristic and
even beautiful all this stuff was, which is kind of
hard to reconcile with the way it looks now, not
that it looks not that I'm insulting the way it

(05:46):
looks now, but it's just it was a different time,
and it's hard to get fully back into that brain space.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's very much a snapshot of
the time. I mean, this is a nineteen ninety two release.
This is hutting edge computer generated imagery from the early nineties,
the very early nineties. And you know, I honestly can't
remember if I ever rented this from a video store.
It's very possible that I did, but I mostly just

(06:14):
remember seeing the commercials for it, because there were a
lot of TV commercials for it. As I remember, I'm
guessing I was watching, you know, it's probably MTV, maybe
the Sci Fi Channel as well, though honestly, I can't
remember offhand when that started out. I think it may
have started in ninety two, so maybe not Sci Fi Channel,
But I feel like MTV at least was prime, prime

(06:38):
target area for these commercials. And it really did feel exciting.
It felt like a revelation. This is the future. This
is what computer generated imagery can do for us, this
is what video games can do for us, because our
video games were not like this, not yet, but it
was the promise that they could be. And in general,
it's like, this is the future, and and you had

(07:00):
every reason to be excited. And honestly, I was looking
back on I was thinking about the fact that, well,
of course I was a child at the time. I
was a kid, so of course I was excited. You know.
Did adults feel the same way, Well, obviously they did,
because on one hand, these videos were highly successful. They were,
you know, on the best sellers lists and all. And

(07:21):
I looked around and I found that Roger Ebert was
a big fan. On the Cisco and Ebert Show, there's
a particular episode I was able to. You can look
it up on the archives and find the full episode.
It's the one where they they review Lorenzo's Oil and
Chaplain and some other you know, kind of stuffy and
certainly non non futuristic movie. But at the end of it,

(07:46):
we have Roger Ebert's video pick of the Week and
it is Beyond the Mind's Eye, and he loves it.
He says, quote, one day computers will be able to
create entire movies, and the visual possibilities are breadth. To
look at where this shot takes us, and they cut
to one of the you know, the otherworldly vistas that

(08:06):
Beyond the Mind's Eye gives us, and he closes up
as saying, it's quite a trip.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
One day computers will animate entire movies.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
And they would like Yeah. In nineteen ninety five, that's
when we got Toy Story from Pixar, the first fully
CGI full length motion pictures, So yeah, it was just
about to happen basically, like they were already in production
on Toys. I think the descript for Toy Story was
kind of like finalized in ninety three, so like really
it was about to happen. So I feel like Ebert

(08:38):
was correct on all part, on all accounts here, this
is essentially what we're going to see, and we have
seen the perfection to some extent. I think of CGI
animated films and the Pixar Disney DreamWorks mold, though of
course it's worth pointing out that things like photorealistic CGI
has a lot more to contend with. You know, there's

(08:59):
a more uncanny valley to traverse in that realm, and
so I don't know if we've seen anything that truly
succeeds in that category.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
Now, if you go back and read what people were
saying about these movies at the time, one very common
theme is that the Mindseye films are regarded as trippy
or psychedelic. Now, that might not seem all that strange
for a computer animated music video film, but that's not

(09:29):
necessarily said about all animated films, or even all art films. So, like,
what is it about this CGI package film idea that
specifically lends itself to descriptions having to do with with
visionary experiences or psychedelic drugs. I was thinking about this,
and this is a theme I'll come back to multiple

(09:50):
times in the episode I've been thinking a lot about
linking techniques in the like just practical techniques of computer animation,
to the effect that the film has on us, and
I was wondering if the trippiness has something to do
with the with the particular capabilities of computer animation at

(10:11):
the time that by algorithmically changing dimension values across time
for like a shape or an image on the screen,
you can create these shifting morphing forms which are all
throughout the animated segments in beyond the mind's eye. I
would say every single one of them has an image,
like a shape or an object that morphs into something else,

(10:35):
and these changes from one thing to another very much
mirror the form shifting visual effects that people commonly experience
on some psychedelic compounds. So I wonder if that's one
part of it, that particular capability of computer animation and
its similarity to psychedelic visual effects. Of course, having one
shape morph into another is something you can do in

(10:56):
traditional hand drawn animation as well, but you see it
a lot in early CGI, and I wonder if it's
because it was like easier to automate by some kind
of stepwise manipulation or algorithm of just the number variables
that you use to create the dimensions of an image.
Another characteristic that I wonder if people were picking up

(11:18):
on in describing this movie as psychedelic or trippy, is
just that the imagery looks super, super weird in a
way that nobody would have been familiar with before CGI.
And again this would have to do with the practical
state of the industry, Like it was impossible to code
a realistic looking human face with computer animation at this time,

(11:40):
so realism is off the table. But you also could
not easily reproduce familiar hand drawn art styles that had
been around for years in traditional animation, So you would,
by necessity, be establishing a whole new visual language for
representing forms from the real world, especially like animals and
plants humans, And so by necessity they look the way

(12:03):
they're rendered is very unfamiliar to us. It doesn't look
either like reality or like any art we're familiar with.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, one thing that becomes obvious as you watch Beyond
the Mind's Eye is that a convincing reproduction of the
human body was not really achievable at this point, but
we still tried, because that's that's that's human art. We
always try to capture our own form in the forms
of animals in our vicinity, and yeah, they don't quite

(12:33):
hit the mark. But in not hitting the mark completely,
there is this it's close enough, you know, it doesn't
you know, we're we're vain pattern seeking creatures. So if
you get close enough to a human form, we'll identify
with it and we'll work with it. Right, So it's still,
you know, engrossing, even if some of the characters are

(12:55):
still a bit on the grotesque side.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
Of things, which is the segment that has a human
figure but it just has leopard print flesh.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
We we'll have to maybybe that'll come to me as
we get into the blow by blow plot of this movie.
But but yeah, you have things like like that that occur,
and yeah, you can still you can still connect with them,
you know. I was reminded in all of this, like
trying to think about like how it felt to see
these things, how it felt to see these kind of representations,

(13:25):
even if they, you know, were very by today's standards,
like crude representations of of like a human body or
an animal and whatnot. I'm reminded a little bit of
some of the these the AI generated images that we've
seen more of them. I'm thinking more of the things
that were really hitting maybe a year or two ago,

(13:46):
you know, during the era where it's like that you
could definitely look at the fingers and count the fingers
to see if something was was computer generated or not
AI generated or not. And I think one of the
things about those images is that, like the images we're
seeing and beyond the mind's eyes when they first hit,
they are not achieving like photorealism, they're not completely convincing.

(14:09):
You see them and you know something is off, but
also in it being off, it's something that you haven't
quite seen before, you're like, because I remember the first
time I saw some of those AI generated images, I
was like, who is this artist? Like it's clearly the
same person because they all kind of look the same,
but it's a little different than anything I've seen before,
and that makes it enthralling. Then then you get bored

(14:32):
with it and you move on. But the technology moves
on as well. The technology advances and it's no longer
capable or it's no longer creating things like it was before,
but the mood is still.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
There, you know.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, Yeah, Now in terms of your point about like
psychedelia and the imagery that we see and beyond the
mind's eye. It is interesting to think about how there's
probably a number of nexus points between like various counterculture
movements and folks as well as some of the individuals

(15:06):
who are like pushing these developments. You know, I'm thinking
of you know, sort of Silicon Valley types, that convergence
of programming and art, like those worlds are probably you know,
inevitably bumping up against each other.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
Here. You can just feel the techno hippie culture dripping
off of this. It's very it's a very West Coast product.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah, Yeah. And at the same time, like think about it,
It's ninety two. A new millennium is coming, and it's
coming fast, and so there are a lot of ideas
about like what is going to happen, How are we
transforming for this new millennium, How is technology going to
change us? How can we elevate ourselves through it? So
there's a you know, there's always a certain amount of anxiety, obviously,

(15:52):
but there is also a certain amount of technological optimism
that's very strong, especially in beyond the Mind's eye.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
I mean, it's quite literally promising to take you to
new realms. There is even today, looking back on it now,
a genuinely infectious sense of exploration and enthusiasm for the
new and the weird in it.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, you can also see
other examples of this, you know, sort of like trance
music culture taking up various sort of futurism ideas, you know,
thinking about the blending of say, you know, trance music
and the writings of Terence mckinna and so forth. So yeah,
I feel like Beyond the Mind's Eye seems to set
right alongside that. And also the title is just so perfect.

(16:37):
I'm always a little bit shocked to realize that it's
called Beyond the Mind's Eye because it's the second in
a series and the first was just the Mind's Eye.
Because Beyond the Mind's Eye is perfect because there is
this sense that like it is promising to show you
things that you cannot imagine yet like it takes this
technological evolution in order for us to even conceive of

(16:58):
these ideas, you know, like that's that's how this hit,
that's how this felt back in the nineties.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
Well, as Professor Brian Oblivion taught us the television screen
is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, it is
part of the physical structure of the brain. And so
by showing you this movie, they are offering you a
brain upgrade. That's what it feels like.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah, And so hopefully we'll be able to hold on
to that as we continue discussing this film, because on
one level, we do have to look at it as
a thing that doesn't hit the same anymore, that is
going to feel more uncanny than it did, that is
going to feel rougher around the edges than it did
back in the day. But at the same time, I

(17:40):
just want to be clear that nobody can discount how
impressive this felt back in the early nineties, and it
is a snapshot of cutting edge technological artistic achievement of
that time period.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Well, despite the tremendous advancements in what's possible with computer
animation since then. I would kind of have a hard
time imagining someone could watch this and not sort of
love it. Now, Yeah, yeah, what what is there to
not like about Beyond the Mind's Eye?

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yeah, because it's gonna I think. On one hand, the music,
of course still stands there. Jon Hammer's music is tremendous
and so that's going to pull you in and if
nothing else, it's going to relax you. The images are
going to relax you. There's nothing here that can hurt you.
This movie is like a nice, warm hug. It spoons
you for its runtime of what an hour and some change,

(18:34):
and yeah, you can you can giggle a little bit
at how some of the effects hold up today, but
it's it's still it's still impressive, all right now. Sadly,
I could not find a rip of the TV spot
for Beyond the Mind's Eye, either to include or just
to re experience it, because I know I must have
seen this commercial hundreds of times back in the day,

(18:57):
but as far as I could tell, nobody has ripped
it in upload. So that's a shame.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
I went looking for that as well and could not
find it.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Now. Fortunately you can find the film itself. There are
a lot of streaming options for it out on the web,
and you can still buy it on DVD. That's assuming
you don't want to go retro and get yourself a
VHS or a laser disc.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
I know we've talked about this before, but when are
laser discs going to come back in the same way
Vinyl has. It just feels right, doesn't it, that we'd
go back.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
To laser It seems like there would be There probably
are a laser disc enthusiasts out there. I know for
a while they held on because there were still certain
films and there. This may still be the case where
there had not been a release superior to the laser
disc release, So I'm not sure. All right, Well, let's

(19:53):
briefly talk about some of the folks involved here. This
is going to be a little different than usual because
we have no human cast, but we do have there
are We're ultimately a lot of humans involved in this.
We're not going to highlight all of them. But credited
as the director and as an editor on this film
is Michael Boydstone. The same year, he had also worked

(20:13):
with musician Pete Bardens I believe of Camel Fame on
a project called Watercolors. I wasn't able to find streaming
content of this, but it apparently combined footage of running
water from Yellowstone with Pete Barden's music. Boydston would go
on to work with Thomas Dolby on nineteen ninety four's

(20:34):
The Gate to the Mind's Eye, which he also directed.
And he also worked on a project called Televoid in
ninety seven, which I'm not saying. I think it's an
unrelated project that does similar things like using different different
computer animated shorts and sort of stitching them together into
a cohesive full picture.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Did Boydston work on the Mindseie movie that had Kansas
music by Kansas?

Speaker 2 (20:58):
I don't think he did have to. You know, there
are different people involved in these Different people did the music,
like Thomas Dolby again was on the Gate to the
Mind's Eye, but he Boydsten went on to work on
a number of educational programs, including at least one episode
of Bill and I The Science Guy, as well as
a series called Diz Kids, and he served as cinematographer

(21:21):
on various TV and film projects, including the twenty sixteen
film Beta Test starring Manu Bennett. And I wasn't able
to find much else about like his role in this
production and how it went down. So I was looking
around and I found his contact information. I reached out
to him and I was like, hey, can we ask
you a few questions about Beyond the Mind's Eye? And

(21:41):
he said, he said, sure, you know it feels like
several lifetimes ago, but I'd be up for that, so
we sent him some questions. As of this recording time,
we have not heard back from him, but if we
hear back from him before publication, we'll tack it on
at the end of this episode, and if he gets
back to us after the episode is published, well, then

(22:01):
we'll include it in a future listener mail segment. I
can't wait to know more, all right, we already mentioned
Jon Hamer born nineteen forty eight check American musician, composer,
and record producer again, best known for his tracks Miami
Vice Theme and Crockett's Theme, both from the nineteen eighty
series Miamivice Again. Crockett's theme especially is just incredible. That's

(22:23):
when you just need a You've probably heard it before,
but if you haven't, go listen to it. Tremendous track.
He won two Grammy Awards for the Miami Vice Theme song.
His other scores include two episodes of Tales from the Crypt,
night Rider two thousand, nineteen ninety six is Beastmester three,
The I of Bracus, and of course that nineteen ninety
Dolph Lugrean film I Come In Piece aka Dark Angel,

(22:46):
which we previously discussed on Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Before recording this episode, we were both watching a news
segment where Jan Hamer was being interviewed primarily about his
work on Beyond the Mind's Eye. Before for the interview began,
there was just the sickest ever clip of him absolutely
shredding a strap on keyboard what you might be tempted

(23:10):
to call a key tar, but I don't know if
he called it a key tar.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
I've seen it referred to as a signature model link
keyboard and maybe our synth junkies can chime in more
on that, but I've read that, like one of the
things about him is the Yeah, he's very much a
keyboard synth guy, and he developed in augmented a way
so that he could jam out on a keyboard like

(23:34):
it was a guitar, like with the energy of rocking
out to a guitar, and as someone who cannot rock
out on a keyboard or a guitar, I can't really
speak to the differences there. Joe, you have guitar experience,
maybe you can tell us what that might entail.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Oh well, I mean performing with a guitar can be
a kind of fun sort of semi athletic thing because
you're standing up. You can run around with it, and
you can sort of dance while you're playing it. Yes,
you can sort of dance while playing a keyboard. I
have less experience there because I can barely play the keyboard,
so I don't I don't know. Yeah, you can't run
around with keyboard unless you turn it into a strap

(24:10):
on keyboard, like like this thing that I'm tempted to
call a guitar.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
I guess, like thinking of clips, I've seen of spirited
guitar players and spirited keyboard players, because there are some
very spirited keyboard players, you know. I mean there's a
different type of rocking out that it can occur. I
guess you can if you're like really rocking out on
the on the synth or the keyboard, like you're still
localized to that machine. You can't like run the stage

(24:36):
or anything, so.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Right, you can kind of headbang, I guess while you're playing,
but yeah, your feet need to stay roughly where they
are now.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Johanhamer's music is widely available on music streaming platforms, and
that includes Beyond the Mind's Eye as an album. You
can listen to it on you know, Apple Music, Spotify,
wherever you get your digital music. He has a lot
of other track I was going through some of his
other album and taking him in. There's a nineteen seventy
five album of his title The First Seven Days, and

(25:05):
there's a track on there titled Light Slash Sun, and
I thought it was very good, all right. The producer
of Beyond the Mind's Eye was Stephen Churchill born nineteen
fifty seven. He produced, I believe all of the Mind's
Eye videos, beginning with nineteen nineties The Mind's Eye, followed
by this film, and then ninety four is The Gate
to the Mind's Eye, ninety six is Odyssey into the

(25:27):
Mind's Eye, ninety seven's Computer Animation Showcase, nineteen ninety eight's
Ancient Alien, and nineteen ninety eight's Computer Animation Celebration. I
don't know why the the title breakdowns seems too much.
At this point, we're no longer talking about the Mind's Eye.
He previously worked as an animator on Disney's The Black
Cauldron in nineteen eighty five. He was a character designer

(25:49):
on The Great Mouse Detective in eighty six, a background
artist on Oliver and Company in eighty eight and an
in between artist on The Little Mermaid in nineteen eighty nine.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
I remember the Great Mate. He was a character designer.
The Great Mouse Detective had some extremely scary characters when
I was little, at least I remember I rented that one,
and there's this bat with sharp teeth on it that
freaked me out. Also, it has a rat villain voiced
by Vincent Price, I think, who gets very scary at
the end.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Oh yeah, yeah, that is definitely a Vincent Price role,
and he is quite good. I'm trying to remember who
voiced the bat. Nobody ever heard of Candy Candido, not
a I believe he was a radio performer and voice actor,
but I don't have a lot of familiarity with his work.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
Well, the two villainous rodents in this movie were They
both freaked me out when I was young, So so
maybe he designed them.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
And then ne was Sherlock Holmes in that?

Speaker 3 (26:44):
Oh really?

Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Oh wait, but Sherlock Holmes is just like the human
who happens to live in the room above the basle
The Great Mouse Detective.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
I think you're right. It's been a long time since
I've seen it.

Speaker 3 (26:56):
Like it's not primarily an adventure about Sherlock Holmes. It
is about his mouse equivalent, Basel though whatever.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, the Black Cauldron is when I've been tempted to revisit,
but I have not yet gotten around to it. It's
got some great dark fantasy elements to it, but it's
not one that I think was well regarded at the
time of its release, and I don't know if people
have warmed up to it or not now. Obviously, this
project encompasses the computer effects work of various individuals, and

(27:24):
again we're not going to be able to have time
to really do justice to everyone, but we'll reference some
of them as they come up. I know that in
the movie databases, the Flora section is credited to yo
Chiro Kawaguchi, and Journey to the Fourth Dimension is credited
to Rick Harper and David Thornton. But of course, is
that that's just some of the people involved in this,

(27:45):
and there are many others.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
Now, as we said earlier, the movie is sort of
you could kind of think of it as like just
a series of music videos. So that's a little misleading
because they're they do kind of have an narrative flow
in a way, but they are a it's a series
of discrete musical numbers on the soundtrack that are each

(28:08):
paired with an animation sequence that maybe sort of one
continuous theme throughout, or might just be just a Shmorgus
board of imagery.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
That's right. And you know, the interesting thing is, like
any anthology, we kind of have a host. Yeah, we
have we have something or someone that is going to
introduce us to the concept of beyond the mind's eye.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
We get a floating virtual bald head with these you know,
polygons on its surface. It almost looks I don't know
if you caught the same thing. Maybe I'm out of
my mind here, but it looks almost kind of like
a floating Jeff Bezos head.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yeah yeah, there's a little bit of Bezos to it.
Yeah yeah, I think that's a strong comparison.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
Anyway, the bezos head tells us you are now entering
a world inside the essence of your imagination, look within
your dreammes. They can take you beyond the mind's eye.
And then we begin to zoom. We begin to zoom
through just a tunnel of textures and colors and things

(29:13):
start to pop out at us. And it is a
fairly overwhelming experience. At first, you're just like plunging down
this tunnel into darkness with colors emerging from out of everywhere,
and you don't even know what you're looking at, and
you can't quite make sense of it. And by the
time you sort of focus on one shape and image,
it's turning into something else. And I can see why

(29:36):
they put this animated segment first, because even in retrospect,
it kind of takes your breath away, and I'm sure
in nineteen ninety two you'd just be like, Wow, I
can't even begin to describe what I'm looking at.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Yeah, because especially if you're watching this on VHS, you
can't just skip to the next chapter. You'd have to
fast forward through stuff, and so it really needs to
hit hard immediately, and it does. Just lots shifting psychedelic
CGI landscapes, fractals and particles, virtual reality bodies, including a
pair of lovers who merge in their love making into

(30:10):
a single extra dimensional dragonfly. And then there's a butterfly,
a bird, a terosaur, a haunted castle, an electric vortex,
and then finally like a reading rainbow butterfly.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
I love when it turns into the haunted castle, because
that has nothing to do with anything that came before.
But suddenly we're in Spirit Halloween and this is just
an animated castle. It's a whoo and bats flying through
the sky. But then when we get close to the bats,
we realize they're not bats, they're terosaurs with devil tongues.
And one of the terosaurs crashes into the quote camera

(30:46):
and breaks the glass of the lens, sort of just
spiderwebs of fracture across the screen, and then the does
the terrator kind of like slide down like a It
does like a bug smeared on a windshield.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
So, on one hand, this whole intro bit feels very demo,
you know. It feels like they're saying someone is saying,
look what CGI can do for you. But on the
other hand, we are definitely seeing parts of a sequence
from the nineteen ninety two film The lawnmower Man. This,
of course, was a science fiction horror movie directed by

(31:23):
Brett Leonard and originally sort of kind of based on
a Stephen King's story, but I believe he was able
to get his name taken off of that. The original
lawnmower Man short story is very creepy but has nothing
to do with virtual reality or computers.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Yeah, I've looked at this up before. I think the
movie has nothing to do with this story except that
there is a guy who operates a lawnmower. That's it.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, And so there's a scene I had to go.
I was able to find this online include a link
for here, jove you wanted to check it out. But
there's a sequence in The lawnmower Man where the character
job Smith played by Jeff fay uh he had he
invites his girlfriend Marnie Burke played by Jenny Wright, to, hey,

(32:09):
come join me in the cyber realm for some of
the cyber sex. And so they're in these you know,
virtual reality harnesses, and then we see in the virtual
realm they are these two lovers that you know, embrace
each other and then they sort of like merge with
each other become a dragonfly. But in The lawnmower Man,

(32:29):
this sequence takes a dark turn. She like gets stuck
in the like the ground or something, and then she
starts freaking out and he turns into a monster and
eats her. So we do not see anybody turn into
a monster and beyond the mind's eye because Obviously that
doesn't fit the vibe here. This is not this is
not about feeling anxious about technology. This isn't about being

(32:51):
afraid that technology is going to eat you. This is
about what technology can transform you into. And it's not
a monster. It is you know, the eternity.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
Well, but we do go from the cybersex to the
Haunted Castle. But it's I guess nothing bad appears to
happen to the two lovers on the screen. It's just
like we're looking at something else now, and it is
a haunted castle.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah, that haunted castle looks inviting though. It's like it's
like you said, spirit Halloween territory. It's like, don't you
want to go over there and meet the fun vampires
that live there?

Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah, that's castle. They give out the full sized candy
bars exactly.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Now. Multiple individuals and I believe studios worked on the
CGI sequences for The lawnmower Man, but they include let's see,
there's a Gimmel Everett, who lived nineteen fifty one through
twenty eleven, who also worked on ninety five's Virtuosity and
nineteen eighty eight Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
The Virtuosity is the movie with a virtual reality character
played by Russell Crowe who is a virtual serial killer
who comes into the real world. And the main thing
I remember about it is that the trailer for the
movie had Russell Crowe walking through mall while playing Stay
in Alive.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah. I think they basically they three D print him
and he's a carbon based organism with blue blood or
something like that.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
It's reverse tron is the situation.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah, sounds like a great idea. I think I saw
it back in the day and I remember enjoying it.
But let's see. We also have Helene Plotkin who also
worked on something that she's credited for, nineteen ninety one's
Liquid Television. Liquid Television that was a similar situation where
they're bringing in different like short films and other short projects.

(34:34):
And then she also was involved in nineteen ninety nine's
Toy Story two. And then there's Brett Leonard born nineteen
fifty nine, who also worked on Virtuosity and Killer Clowns
from out He Space. He also directed the music video
for Peter Gabriel's Kiss That Frog in two thousand and four,
which I had great track, amazing album, big fan of Us.

(34:55):
The other interesting thing about Brett Leonard, who again it's
some connection to this film is that he directed the
nineteen eighty nine film The Dead Pit, a horror movie
that is best known to VHS fans for its box
VHS box with the light up eyes. So look up
an image of this. If you ever went into a

(35:15):
VHS rental store back in the day, you inevitably saw this.
And if the people running the place remember to refresh
its batteries, it's the eyes on the front of the
VHS box would light up.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
That's a really good gimmick. I you know, I feel
I was a connoisseur of VHS boxes in the nineties
in the video store, and I don't remember this.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, I mean it's not a I don't think. I
don't know anything about the film itself, and I never
rented it. How could I. I was a child and
this was scary, But you know it's I've seen it
for sale and you know, prize by collectors. So anyway,
those are just some of the folks that were connected
to these sequences from The lawnmower Man, which have been

(35:55):
repurposed here in Beyond the Mind's Eye. And this won't
be the last time we see lawnmower man footage in
this feature.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
Okay, well, that's just the introductory segment. We cannot speak
at great length about all of the segments in the movie,
but we'll try to talk about at least most of
them for a bit. The second one I thought was
also pretty interesting. This one is called Seeds, and it's
an animation on the concept of pan spermia, with like
a nut or a thing that looks kind of like

(36:23):
a pumpkin seed flying through space and then landing on Earth.
I don't know why I said a pumpkin seed, because
it doesn't look like a pumpkin seed. It's some other
kind of seed. I don't know what seed.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
Would you compare it to, rob It's just a big
old space seed.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
Yeah, I don't know, caraway seed or something. It's a
big old seed. It flies through space and then it
plunks down on Earth, and then it gives rise to
life on Earth, and we see all kinds of just
kind of you know, life dancing about. We see trees
as groovy shape shifting dancing machines. Like the trees to

(36:57):
the beat of the song, they shift to transform into
different kinds of trees with different arrangements of branches and leaves,
which again goes back to this morphing concept that we
see throughout this whole thing. So there's all these kinds
of different representations of life growing and morphing and shifting
and taking these different forms, and then eventually there are

(37:18):
these pods, these plants that grow as pods that end
up shooting seeds back out into space. So it's as
if the cycle continues.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Yeah. Apparently this sequence uses imagery created by computer graphics
artists and researcher Carl Simms born nineteen sixty two from
his nineteen ninety short Panspermia. He incidentally served as a
producer on the first Minds I release, and this footage
would later be used in the Boydsten directed music video
for Pantera's cover of the Black Sabbath instrumental Planet Caravan,

(37:51):
and you can also find this on YouTube.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
I love Sabbath, I like that song. I did listen
and watch this, and I don't love the pinter A cover.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
I have to say this whole Panspermia section, I felt
like this one felt perhaps more dated by today's standards
than the intro, perhaps because a lot of it hinges
on depictions of natural world organisms like actual plants, actual animals,
And again, what it accomplishes for nineteen ninety or nineteen
ninety two is amazing. But I don't know. On top

(38:26):
of that, it's not my favorite Hommer track beyond the
Mind's Eye. But things do pick up again when we
get back into the depictions of actual alien pant spermia
with the big seed launching cannon plants and so forth.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
Yeah, yeah, Okay. The next segment I thought was interesting
because it's called Afternoon Adventure, and this track incorporates both
live action and computer animation, and it over lays one

(39:03):
on top of the other, so we get shots. At
least that's what I think is going on. I don't
think that's cgi. It couldn't be. No, it is, it seems.
For example, we get a footage of a real forest
that is overlaid with animated insects, and we see a
wasp chasing a bee. And what I love is that
the Onhammer track that is paired with this sounds like

(39:27):
chase music from an action film in the eighties or
like from Miami Vice. It's like sick, you know, like
guitar shredding kind of Chase music.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Yeah, yeah, like like that bee just robbed a bank
and the wasp is on the case.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Yeah, Wasp, you're a loose cannon. But this has a
kind of twist ending actually, So at the you know,
we go around and we see a lot of the
landscape and we end up zooming out in this one,
and we zoom out and out and out, and we
go up in the sky and see this whole, you know,
the contours of the earth and the lakes and the
rivers and the hills, and we keep zooming out until

(40:03):
we go through a glass barrier and we realized the
landscape where we were watching these insects interact was inside
of a dome, a dome in space on the surface
of a barren moon. And there are many domes like it.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
What this is great though, because, yeah, it starts off
seeming like, yeah, bold choice to feature both live action
and computer generated bugs, especially since you know, you really
can't create a photorealistic bug at this point. But yeah,
by the time you get to the domes, amazing. This
is exactly what you want out of your CGI imagery

(40:42):
at this point in time. Let us depict other worlds,
Let us depict you know, the future show us give
us this revelation, and it does. Now.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
The next segment I think, is called Brave New World.
It is sort of a representation of the insides of
a computer, but rendered in a dramatic, almost heroic fashion,
And as I was watching it, it actually looked quite
familiar to me, and I started thinking, wait a minute,

(41:11):
is this footage that was created for those Intel Pennium
commercials in the nineties.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
It might have been. I was looking around for an example,
and I kept running across other Intel commercials, so I'm
not sure about that. But yeah, we get dancing, floating
silver squares, and then we enter various geometric shapes, a
real kaleidoscope experience, and the track here from Jon Hammer
is very soothing. But then it picks up the pace

(41:38):
as we sail through the insides of a computer, and
this is where we get into familiar processor commercial territory. Eventually,
a golden titan rises from the computer realm to lift
up a giant gear and oh, we realized this titan
is Atlas. And I'm not sure I love the idea
of computer technology as a shackled, eternally punished titan. I

(42:02):
don't know exactly what we're trying to portray there.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
Yeah, whether it's the Greek themes or it's going in
a different direction with some kind of I don't know,
iron Rand meditation. In any case, this one doesn't hit
so great for me.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Yeah, but the Titan looks cool, I will say that.

Speaker 3 (42:17):
Yeah, let's see. After this, there's a segment called I
think Transformers. This one really looks like a video game,
and I think that's because in part it is reproducing
footage from The lawnmower Man of a video game they
play in the lawnmower Man. And then also I think
we actually just straight up see the Job, a character
from lawnmower Man in.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
This we do like the raging virtual job.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
Where he's yeah, he's mad.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yeah. And then there's I haven't seen The lawnmower Man
in a while. I didn't didn't have time to watch
it in full for this, but yeah, there's a sequence
in lawnmower Man where they're at an arcade. They're playing
some sort of like a racing game, and we see
the virtual footage from that part of the film here.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
Yeah, Okay, the race part being its people's zoomings through
a kind of corridor with these closing teeth that you
have to kind of navigate through gaps in.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
This reminds me there was there was a video game
tie into the lawnmower Man and MYO. My video game
capabilities at the time were very limited. I think I
had a Sega Genesis and they put this game out
on Sega Genesis, and I remember wanting it because basically,
with the limited capacity of the Sega Genesis, they were

(43:29):
able to create some sort of virtual sections, you know,
where you're like flying around in a three dimensional space,
something that you know, by today's standards is just old hat,
but at the time on Genesis, like it was like, whoa,
you can do things like that on this machine. I
want in. Even though I don't know how I feel

(43:49):
about that movie, I want to play the game. And
to be clear, I think other parts of the game
were just typical side scrolling, but they had some sort
of a gimmicked sort of reality section.

Speaker 3 (44:01):
Okay, oh but wait a minute. This one's called Transformers
and there's something like a transformer in it.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Yeah, yeah, we do get We do get some sort
of a laser night that's chasing around a transformer like
a robot that changes into a race car. I don't
know if this is an actual transformer or a gobot
or just a general riff on the overall concept, but
there it is.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
Man. So the next segment is one that really was
a hit for me. It's probably the cheesiest segment, or
one of the cheesiest in it, but I loved it,
especially because of how catchy the music is. This is
the one called Too Far, which has more different imagery
in it than I can possibly recount here. But it's

(44:48):
got what these sort of jazz design robots playing drums
on a crumbling planet surface with desolate gray buildings. What
a weird juxtaposition. So it's like a ray post apocalyptic
world with ruined buildings. But these happy robots made of
these kind of jazz squiggles are all like, oh boy,

(45:08):
I'm feeling the feeling the groove.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
It's like you had a monkey's paw and you wished
that windows clip Art became like syndient. You know, we're
not clip art really. What's his name? The paper Clippy Clippy.
It's like Clippy and his like demonic kin were brought
to life and they're here to rock out at least
in theory, but you know it's gonna get violent.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Clip multicolored Clippy family reunion and they're all playing hand drums. Yeah,
and uh, but then it's not just that. There's also
an angry looking like hamhead guy sitting watching a TV
and a necktie and he keeps kind of burping and
his head comes off and then it sinks down into
his neck and then it pops off again. And he's

(45:52):
watching things on TV. And we see what he's watching
on the TV, which is I think, robots on roller coasters.
And then there's there's more TV watching themes with something
that's just a straight up eyeball watching a TV. But
then it gets scared and it hides behind the couch.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
Ah. You know. The roller coaster, the virtual roller coaster thing,
of course, has never gotten old like that basically spawned
a whole video game franchise, and I think Regal Cinema
still rolls that out at the beginning of their seeing
a picture in Regal Cinema. Right, you get to ride
that virtual roller coaster a little bit. I think some
people like will put their hands up to get into it.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
You know, I'll do that. Oh and then so this
musical number has some vocals in it. Vocals are not
super prominent in the music throughout this but a couple
of tracks have vocals. Uh. And the only lyrics you
get in this song, which again the segment is called
too Far. We see these sort of these these three

(46:51):
singers with big hair, all three of them. It's CGI singers.
Of course. I don't know if I needed to say that,
but yes, these sort of sort of CGI mannic figures
with huge hair, and they're singing too far, take it easy,
It's all right? What are those three phrases? How do
they interlock? Too far? Take it easy, It's all right?

Speaker 2 (47:15):
It's like what the stages of grief or something?

Speaker 3 (47:17):
Right? Okay? Oh, and then there's like a whole eyeball family.
Remember there was an eyeball earlier that was watching the
TV and it got scared. But now there's a whole
family of eyeballs. Is like a mommy and daddy eyeball.
And then I'm a lot of little eyeballs and they're
all watching the TV, and they're watching a robot on
TV tell us that we've gone too far. And then

(47:39):
my favorite part of the whole thing is we see
this assembly line inside of a factory that makes terminators.
They're just making terminator exoskeletons, good, pumping out T eight hundreds,
and then they produce a canned beverage called Too Far Juice.
Funny tie in here. I just on a lark. I

(48:02):
don't know why it even occurred to me to do this.
I was like, wonder if there's anything in reality called
Too Far Juice? And I googled it and there is
a brewery based in Minnesota called the Fair State Brewing
Cooperative that I've never had a beer from them, so
I don't know anything about them, except they have a
beer called Too Far Juice, and I compared it. The

(48:23):
can design looks exactly like this can in beyond the
mind's eyes. That is a deep reference for a brewery
to make. I don't know how that happened.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
I think it's just because of just all the beer
out there. I'm not really a beer enthusiast, but I
love seeing the variety. There's so many different beers. There's
so many different like cool names for beers, and you
even see cool stuff like the Wayland Utani beer. Aspen
beer was finally brought into reality recently as a promotion

(48:54):
for Alien Romulus by Angel City Brewery, you could finally
get a can of the beer that they're drinking on
the Nostromo in the original nineteen seventy nine Alien film.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
It's very safe to drink.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
But yeah, this does seem like a much deeper cut.
Too Far Juice seems that maybe a bit too far.
I don't know how many people who drank it really
caught the reference, but you know, tip of the hat
to those that did.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
If I'm ever visiting Minnesota, I'm gonna have to get
me a too Far Juice.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Well, this whole segment here of beyond the mind's eye,
this one really made me want my MTV. This felt very,
very in line with the Dire Straits video Yes for
Money for Nothing. Yeah, so that's the vibe I got here.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
Absolutely. Yeah. Let's see. Now there are still more segments
to talk about. There's one called Windows. It's kind of
a change of pace because this one is fairly melancholy,
like most of the others are I don't know, the
others are jaunty here, they're you know, more of a
kind of a spirit of fun or excitement. This one
is a little bit down tim and a little bit sad,

(50:01):
and we see a room full of paintings and wine
bottles and a lute, and then the lute floats off
of the wall, and then everything starts floating in the
air and flying around, and there's a guitar solo, and
it ends sort of with classic classical two D paintings
like van Goffs self portrait peeling out into three dimensions.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
And this effect is pretty cool. I thought this held
up pretty good. It doesn't feel as dated as as
a lot of things inherently feel dated in this picture.
And I like the music here, especially the early goings
of it are very chill, very gentle. The gentle young
hammer agree.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Now the gentle themes continue because the next segment is
quite tender. It's like a love story, and it actually
has dialogue. We didn't have that since the intro. So
the music here it's called nothing but Love, and it
sounds kind of like soft acoustic guitar. We meet two
different characters named Latta and Arturo, and we see a

(50:57):
note on the wall that says a lot of birthday,
see you at seven, virtually yours Arturo. So I guess
these are characters that know they are. They're conscious self
consciously virtual characters, but they're both sort of red tinted
CGI bodies. Arturo comes in and meets Lata, and then

(51:19):
he offers her a magic checkered cube kind of like
a Rubik's cube that turns into a flying, liquid metal snake.
And then Lota turns old and looks mad, and then
we get dialogue and she says, I don't want your sculptures.
I love you, and then they kiss and then they
twirl and then they melt together as liquid metal.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
That's what love in the virtual realm consists of. I
guess we have kind of This is like an Adam
and Eve sort of thing. Right is the red sculpture
and Apple the snake? Self explanatory?

Speaker 3 (51:52):
Okay, I didn't think about that. The next one is great.
It's called Pyramid. I love this one. It's got some
interesting kind of flute sounds. It sounds almost kind of
South American or something. And then it's got like a
dog chasing butterflies, these strange marionette gods dancing on top
of a pyramid with a yellow flaming sky. This is

(52:14):
the one that's got a lady with like leopard print
on her flesh. At one point, she says, we are
of the butterfly.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
Yeah, I mean that's inherently trippy and cryptic. But the
dancing gods or statues or whatever they are, these were monstrous,
but in the sense too that like they're moving in
a way that maybe trying to pattern like human dance movements,
but it just feels very clunky and inhuman. But I
don't know that kind of works. If these are gods,

(52:44):
why not. They're not of our world, And generally I
like the other worldliness of this section, you know, strange pyramids,
weird gods, talking leopard ladies. I'm all for it. You know.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
I've got a real beef with be on the mind side, though,
which is that up to this point there have been
not nearly enough human bodies with horse heads. They're about
to do me right here. So Theater of Magic is
the next segment. It's got everything you want. It's got
mirrors with masks flying around inside them. It's got a
theater lobby staircase. So it's like that animation at the

(53:20):
movie Theater where you go out of the It shows
you going out of the theater and out the staircase
down the staircase to the lobby to get some refreshments. Here,
it's the opposite. You're going up the staircase in the lobby.
And then we see a marble statue of a man
playing an obo at a marble lion, which comes to
life on an alien planet, jumps over a flaming brazier,

(53:41):
goes into a maze, and then we see a volcano
explode and this turns into a metallic woman with a
horse head.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Oh yeah, I love I love this. I love the creatures,
the weird landscapes, the virtual reality zooms, the labyrinth, that
volcano spewing dianetics everywhere, great stuff.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
Yeah yeah, Oh, and this is the one that's got
the eyeball metronomes. At one point, we're just on a
planet surface and they're metronomes ticking everywhere, and they've got
eyeballs at the top of the ticker whatever you call that,
the I don't know what it's called, the part that
ticks on a metronome. It's like Easter Island, but with
eyeball metronomes. And then we see a Golden War galley

(54:25):
rowing into space. Hey, connecting to recent episodes, this is
was this a triream. I don't think so. It just
looks like one level of ores.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
To me, this looked like, yeah, we have elements of
sort of fantasy Viking here. We Yeah, this is take
it for what it is. It's a crazy space galley
and it is amazing.

Speaker 3 (54:44):
Yeah, and so we also in this one gets some
mixing of live action shots of locations and models, like
a room and a house with CGI and then a
landscape with green clouds and lightning. I recall this one
kind of ends abruptly.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Yeah, yeah, some of them do. Like, Okay, we've said
all we can say about this, move on to the
next one.

Speaker 3 (55:05):
That sort of thing. Okay, very last segment. This one
starts with space imagery. It depicts a quasar, like a
rotating black hole, surrounded by this big disc of orange dust,
the jets coming out the poles. We see a sea
scape and there is a mermaid with one of those
seashell bras and she I noticed this about the mermaid.

(55:26):
She's got hinges like her tail, like hinges her fishtail does,
which made me think she's supposed to be not an
organic mermaid but a toy come to life.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
I guess.

Speaker 3 (55:37):
So. Yeah, but in any case, she flies into the sky,
and then we get a trio of naked male figures
without faces, so the interior of the skull is just smooth,
and they start folding upon themselves and into each other,
and it becomes just this kaleidoscopic exercise of folding and

(55:59):
mixing and blending these naked male forms altogether.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Yeah, this one's pretty cool. You could imagine this playing
on the big screen behind you know, your favorite prog
rock band or something.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
Yeah, and then we go to credits, which there are
a lot of.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
Yeah, it's like a solid ten minutes of credits. Like
I was expecting at least five more minutes of computer
animated mayhem, but no, just ten minutes of credits. But
that also means ten more minutes of Yon Homer music
and it's pretty good. And you know, to their credit
they do shout out seemingly everybody involved in the creation

(56:34):
of these images, so you know, well worth a look.

Speaker 3 (56:46):
All right, So we've done a basic outline of the
content of Beyond the Mind's Eye. But I was so
curious about why this movie feels, so I don't know,
potent with meaning and historical significance, and so I thought
we might analyze a little bit here or see what
we can come up with at least, And one way
of thinking about it that was sticking in my mind

(57:08):
is that, you know, I'm pretty strongly persuaded by medium
is the message kind of analysis. In other words, I
think a lot of times the practical functional characteristics of
a medium of information delivery often influence are thinking about
the world more powerfully than the content of the information delivered.
So a classic example of this kind of thinking, I've

(57:32):
mentioned this on the show before is the kind of
Neil Postman idea that the invention of television had a
powerful influence on culture because the format of TV puts
a primary emphasis on the entertainment value of information. So
what's important is the ability of something to grab and

(57:52):
hold on to your visual attention, So that when printed
news shifted to TV news, you also get a shift
in our fundamental concept of news worthiness that what was
newsworthy became more likely to be synonymous with what's most
entertaining or attention holding, et cetera. So, thinking with that

(58:12):
kind of analysis, I started to wonder, what, if anything,
are the distinct messages that are hidden in the medium
of computer animation as distinct from the medium of live
action film or from traditional animation. One of the things
that absolutely stood out to me about it is that
there is an incredibly strong theme of absorption running throughout.

(58:38):
It is hard to watch Beyond the mind's eye and
not come away thinking that your essence will somehow be
absorbed and subsumed into a kind of metallic goop out
of which infinite other forms will be assembled and then
liquidated once again. So you are not necessarily discreet. You

(58:58):
are a quantity of mold material, which can be both
frightening and exciting. The kind of friendly version of this
idea is oneness with the universe, but the more the
more threatening version is just that kind of like you
are raw material that something or someone could turn into anything.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
This reminds me of stuff we've discussed in the show
before concerning the ideas of Jaron Lanier that you know
when it comes to social media, and that is that
you are not the user. You are the product. You're
a part of this grand thing, but you were You're
not playing the role in it that you thought you were.
So so yeah, it's certainly worth thinking about. But I

(59:41):
agree there is a tangible desire that is evident in
this film that like, you want to be absorbed by
a comforting digital world. You know, a strong sense of
technological optimism along those lines where about where computer culture
is headed, where it can take you, and it does
don't entertain the possibility that CGI technology will eat us,

(01:00:03):
even though again that's definitely a part of the lawnmower
Man sequences that were cut out for Beyond the Mind's Eye.

Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Yeah, well, there's a fine line between being absorbed and
being eaten, I guess. I mean just the absorption themes
are more they feel more wholesome and inviting. It's just
kind of like, yeah, you're going to become a part
of it all, and then all of that will become
many other things.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
Well, it's interesting that like kind of ties into some
aspects of the psychedelic experience, which of course, you know
differs from the person to person. But you know, this
idea of interconnectedness, realizing that you're all part of like
one people, one planet. You know that all these interpersonal
connections are the most valuable things in your life, and
there's this idea Okay, well, maybe the future is going

(01:00:49):
to be a technological version of that and it sort
of is, but it also sort of isn't, or it
can be that with a more negative air to it,
you know, it's I guess the reality of something is
always like maybe not a complete divorce from the initial optimism,
but there are other dimensions to it as well.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
Yeah, I can absolutely see that. Man. One thing I
really think about that stands out in all this early
CGI is the strong communicated idea that the essence of
all reality is essentially geometric, that the underlying structure of
planets and trees and human beings and music and love

(01:01:33):
and starlight is polyhedrons. And I don't know exactly like
if you sort of take on that feeling, how that
catches out into values or other beliefs about the world.
But it is hard to deny that that is a
feeling created by watching this stuff. Everything turns into a

(01:01:53):
series of intersecting angles and lines, and that can create
a very elegant feeling, the kind of a kind of
mathematical beauty and a sense of symmetry in all that,
Like the idea that the world is reducible to geometry,
can be a beautiful and romantic way to think about things.
And it's also like the functional power of math kind

(01:02:14):
of leads you to think that, Like, I don't know,
just thinking of everything as as geometry and math to
be manipulated means that like almost anything is possible in reality.
But yeah, I'm not sure exactly where all that goes.
But there's a geometric brain mindset that really gets into
you from watching all of this animation.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Yeah, I mean it's like everything is coming out of
an order, an order that is understood that is literally
programmed by human beings, Like almost like we're recreating reality,
but it's a reality that makes sense and is understandable
and we have full control over.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
Yeah, which I guess that's one of the advantages of
one of the attractions of various like virtual worlds, right,
it is like a limited version of the real world
world that we have more control over and we know
the limits of.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
Yeah, speaking of our level of control. Another thing I
was thinking about with beyond the mind's eye and zooming
out to the broader issue of CGI as a medium.
What is the message of the CGI medium. I was
really thinking about the idea of a moving perspective. So
in live action and traditional animation, we sometimes have a

(01:03:28):
camera or a perspective that moves through the space that
we're looking at. But more often, i'd say at least
half the time, you have a static camera or a
static perspective with moving subjects. So usually when you're watching
other types of media, you are holding still and the
subject of the shot is what's in motion. Again, that's changes.

(01:03:50):
You know, there are dolly shots, and there are moving
cameras in film and all that. It happens sometimes, but
more often you're used to being in one place and
watching the subject move. When I think about early computer animation,
it seems to me that the quote camera, though of
course there is no camera, it's just the you know,
the selected viewpoint within the three D space. As the

(01:04:11):
frames are rendered, it feels like that camera almost never
stops moving, and in beyond the mind's eye, it's almost
constantly in motion. And that motion means we are, without
our say so, being just pulled into scenes and images,
as with a tractor beam. So the very first animated
segment of this movie has the viewer plunging through a

(01:04:34):
tunnel of lights, and you know, remember what the head
tells you at the beginning, Actually, it says you are
now entering a world inside the essence of your imagination,
look within your dreams. They can take you beyond the
mind's eye. So I think it's it's not a coincidence
that this early CGI showcase would use this kind of

(01:04:55):
language of being literally taken somewhere. By looking, you are
a agreeing to be taken somewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
Yeah. Yeah, enter into the world a dream. I mean
that lines up with what I was saying earlier about
more recent AI generated images, that they seem like the
product of dream. They seem like a dream that you
have partially forgotten, and that's part of the appeal of it,
And that's I feel like that's definitely the case here
in the early nineties with this footage in particular. Also,

(01:05:26):
again it fits with the subject matter. It's not really
there's not really a narrative. It's very abstract. The meaning
is entirely open to your interpretation for the most part. Yeah,
it's it's a trip, as Roger Ebert.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Said, Yeah, exactly, And the constant motion of the viewpoint
of the perspective or the camera makes it feel like
it's literally a trip. You are constantly being sucked into
new places and physically made to look at new things
as opposed to being where you are and having things
happen in front of you. Now, what does that kind
of message cash out? I don't know. I feel like

(01:06:02):
it kind of it kind of ties into another line
and a song in there, the too Far Take it Easy,
It's all right. It's almost like, you know, this new
world of technology is going to take you places without
asking you. It's it's going to overwhelm you and just
take you there. And now you're looking at this and
you might not even comprehend or be able to control

(01:06:23):
what it is you're seeing now, But just relax and surrender.
It'll be okay.

Speaker 2 (01:06:30):
Say yes to the lawnmower Man. Yeah, it weirdly has
me wanting to rewatch the lawnmower Man or lawnmower Man Too,
Job's War or whatever other title it had.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
You know, I haven't seen them in a long time.
I would want to watch them for the animated scenes,
But what I recall is that the human plot and
all that is just kind of unpleasant. Yeah, likely, so
likely so, but who knows, It's been a while. Nobody
eats yard clippings though, like that was the crew One
of the crew things about the original king store. Well,

(01:07:02):
if the animator merges your form into that of a sheep,
you might you know, this is liable to happen to
all of us because our again, our forms are not
fixed where we can morphit any moment. Oh, and that
sort of ties into just one last thing I wanted
to mention. I thought was interesting about trends in early CGI.
Did you also notice a visual theme that things are

(01:07:25):
the same at every scale, That there's like all this
zooming in and out and going out into space and
seeing planets and stars and quasars and galaxies and all that,
and then you zoom in and see microscopic mechanisms and
cells in a bloodstream, and circuit boards, circuit boards represented
as cities with skyscrapers and stuff, And so there's this.

(01:07:47):
It seemed to me there's this repeated theme throughout a
lot of early CGI, and it's here in this movie too,
of a kind of scale agnosticism, that what exists at
one level of resolution and is reproduced at greater levels
of resolution. So the more you zoom in or the
more you zoom out, you just keep seeing the same patterns.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, as we inevitably like
zoom in and out of these imagined micro and macro worlds.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
The message of that is you got to put computers
inside your body. It's time to be a cyborg.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Yeah, I guess. I mean that's part of the that's
kind of wrapped up in the optimism too, like we'll
become machines, will become this synthesis of biology and technology,
and it's just gonna make everything smoother and cooler and shinier.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
I can't wait to be t one thousand coup.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Yeah, everything is crow all right. Well, there you have
it beyond the mind's eye. I don't know if I'm
gonna keep exploring the other films in this franchise. It
seems like somebody should put out a big, thick blu
ray set like of all of them. Surely that's in
the works.

Speaker 3 (01:08:59):
Why has nobody done that? Yeah? Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
I read that some of the extras on one of
the physical releases of this included a sequence where we
get to see a young Hummer band in which all
four members of the band are Yon Hummer. So there
are some extras like that I'd like to see as well.
I couldn't find a.

Speaker 3 (01:09:17):
Stream of that anywhere that's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
All right. As of publication time, we have not yet
heard back from the director. If we do hear back
from the director, please tune in to the next listener
Mail episode and we will share his answers to our questions.
All Right, we're gonna go ahead and close out this
episode of Weird House Cinema. This one's been fine. We'd
love to hear from everyone out there. Were you too

(01:09:42):
a child of the nineties? Do you remember the commercials
for this on TV or in print? Did you rent
or purchase Beyond the Mind's Eye? And how much did
it blow your mind? We want to hear your thoughts
on it, and what has it been like to revisit it?
What are your what are your thoughts on some of

(01:10:02):
our various ideas that we presented in this episode. Let's
see if you uh. We'll just remind you here that
Weird House Cinema. These are Friday in the Stuff to
Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a science and
culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but
on Fridays we set all that aside for the time being.
If you want to see a complete list of all
the films we've covered on Weird House Cinema over the years.

(01:10:25):
Go to letterbox dot com. It's L E T T
E R B O x D dot com. Our profile
is weird House and you will find the list. Sometimes
there'll be a sneak peek ahead at what's coming out
the following week.

Speaker 3 (01:10:38):
Huge Things, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind and is production of iHeartRadio.
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