They grow up so fast
Sam (7) and I were watching the groundbreaking series Planet Earth the other day, the "Shallow Seas" episode. To give a little shape to its eye-popping array of fabulous images of animals doing things, "Shallow Seas" incorporates a little tiny "plot:" a mother humpback whale gives birth to a calf at the Equator, then hangs out with it for five months while it gets big, then swims with it to the North Pole, where the seas are rich with whatever humpback whales eat. In this arduous five-month period, the mother humpback eats nothing.
Anyway, Sam and I are watching "Shallow Seas," and they tell us about the mother humpback and her devotion to her calf, and then they tell us about coral reefs and sea-snakes and brittle stars and a whole bunch of other critters, and then they come back to the mother humpback and her calf and "check in" with them, as they’re heading north on their long trek.
And Sam says: "Wait. Did they follow this humpback and her calf all the way from the Equator to the North Pole? Why would they do that? Wouldn’t it make more sense to shoot one humpback and calf at the Equator, then go to the North Pole and find another humpback and calf that just kind of looks like the first one? I mean, it’s not like anybody could tell the difference."
Already a producer.
I love that series. Some of the episodes though I don’t watch as often as others (I like to put things on in the background while I rattle around the house; it helps stave off the terrible loneliness of unemployment) because of how intense they are. Have you watched the whole series? Would it be a spoiler to tell you which ones and why?
I think we’ve watched the whole series, but not in order — Sam is more interested in some ecosystems more than others. And he doesn’t like the parts where scientists and documentary filmmakers yak about stuff.
Heh–some of those ‘Photographer Diaries’ or whatever they were called were amazing. The Giant Batdung Mountain Filled With Bugs was horrifying.
The one I was talking about was the episode in which the polar bear swam hundreds of miles though open ocean, found hope of food in the form of a walrus colony while on the verge of starvation, tried to take one on just to survive, and then received horrific wounds and died. I cried harder during that than any recent film drama that comes to mind. . .except maybe The Fountain. Or Babe: Pig in the City.
It’s hard to retain a sense of perspective of the scale of nature and also not apply it to everyday situations. Some drunk guy at a party was complaining about his boss the other day and I was on the verge of declaring ‘At least you didn’t sacrifice your every minute of the day to raise your young only to see them wiped out by a single hungry raccoon! SHOVE OFF!’
Heh–some of those ‘Photographer Diaries’ or whatever they were called were amazing. The Giant Batdung Mountain Filled With Bugs was horrifying.
Oh sweet jesus. Long long time ago, I read a book about George Romero, and IIRC, this is the cave that they got the cockroaches for CREEPSHOW (and how they freaked the fuck out of Tom Savini). I’ve had nightmares about this cave and I’ve never seen it. Thank you for alerting me to this episode of “Planet Earth” — I now know to avoid it forever.
— Kent M. Beeson
Huh. That’s interesting about Tom Savini hating bugs–I read he was a photojournalist in Vietnam and that’s why the gooshy bits in some of the Dead movies are one of the few things to really nauseate me.
I think these days they try to only use bugs who are bred in captivity in order to maintain sanitary conditions for the actors. If they’d told me ‘You’re filming a scene with thousands of roaches we mined from a cave full of bat dung’ I believe I would have searched for a new vocation.
You’re right — it is strange that Savini would hate bugs, since I’m pretty sure Vietnam has stuff larger than ladybugs. Maybe that’s where he picked up his phobia?
Again, I read this book back in college, which was, man, almost 20 years ago now. Doing some research, I’m pretty sure it was “The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh”; this picture looks very familiar (http://www.atrocitiescinema.com/books/zombiesthatatepittsburgh.html). But my memory isn’t what it was, so maybe it was another FX artist.
I think these days they try to only use bugs who are bred in captivity in order to maintain sanitary conditions for the actors. If they’d told me ‘You’re filming a scene with thousands of roaches we mined from a cave full of bat dung’ I believe I would have searched for a new vocation.
Yeah, that’s another detail that seems strange now, but that’s how I remember it. (At least, that was the first time I’d ever heard about that cave.) The bugs were for the scene where [SPOILER] the bugs emerge from the dead body of E.G. Marshall, which was (obviously) a dummy for the shot. What I most remember about the account was that Savini (or whoever the phobic one was) was working on the dead body and one of the bugs got on his hand, and he remembered he was instantly at the far corner of the room, like he teleported or something. It stuck with me, because that’s exactly what it’s like when you’re bug phobic and something like that happens — you just lose time all of a sudden in your frenzied attempts to get away.
Okay, time to stop thinking about bugs 🙂
— Kent M. Beeson
Very astute of him. At least he didn’t say “Why do we need to shoot this nature documentary on location? We can do this with CGI and save a bundle!”
Or, as Jack Handey said, “I’d like to see a nature film where an eagle swoops down and pulls a fish out of a lake, and then maybe he’s flying along, low to the ground, and the fish pulls a worm out of the ground. Now that’s a documentary!”
In our March issue, we have a photo of a bird with a fish in its mouth, and the fish has another fish in its mouth. Now that’s a photograph!
–Ed.
And then in twenty years, he can get payback for all those nights you made him eat his vegetables and that one time you wouldn’t buy him the toy he wanted, by asking you “But Dad, isn’t Sexy Space Fantasy really all about a journey to love?”
Does it have to be a humpback whale?
Panda bears are popular, let’s make it a panda bear’s journey with it’s cub to the North Pole. That’ll get kids in the seats.
Especially now that they can do kung-fu.
Yeah and Taekwondo Whale doesn’t really roll off the tongue.
“Taekowndo Whale.”
“Tai-kwan-do Way-yul.”
You know, actually….