In last night's "Paper Man"(1971), four college students use their university's "Big Brain" computer to create a fake identity after one of them mistakenly receives a credit card in the mail. The students themselves are cynical about credit: "Everyone must have it," Jerry, their leader, jokes. "And everyone must abuse it. It's the American way." Thus, they see nothing wrong in creating their Paper Man, after young "Joel" (Elliott Street), a freshman computer programmer, finds the mis-mailed credit card in his letterbox. They joke about it. "The Corporate Computer made a mistake, imagine that! So much for reducing us all to numbers." Leader "Jerry" (James Stacy), a med student, pushes the paper man idea because he's broke and needs the purchasing power. "C'mon, who are we hurting? Everyone does it and we can pay it back when we're all rich." "Lisa" (Tina Chen), the Big Brain language programmer, is game. Joel is too; he's only 17 but already writes code well enough to program Big Brain to calculate chess games four moves ahead. The script mentions Gaming Theory years before anyone had heard of it. Finally, there's "Karen" (Stephanie Powers). She's Jerry's girl, or so he thinks. She's studying graduate level psychology and knows nothing about computers.
The four agree then, on creating the paper man, who they call Henry Norman for the name on the credit card.
The only problem is, they'll have to create a bank account for "Henry" and a bunch of other stuff, like a place of work, a DOB, and basically a life history in case anyone checks. They've gotta create a fake Real Person, one who exists entirely on paper (i.e in the computer system). And since none of them knows how to do that, Jerry - a handsome jock-on-campus who is nonetheless damaged by his Vietnam combat experience - recruits nerdy computer genius "Avery" (Dean Stockwell, sporting an Art Garfunkel hairdo). Jerry "pals up" to Avery, in the way a BMOC might prank the campus dork by pretending to be his friend. Avery knows he's being played, but because it's a chance to show his skills, he agrees to use Big Brain to create the necessary files to establish Henry Norman as a "real" person. Half an hour at the keyboard is all Avery needs: "There, I did it. Henry Norman exists."
The gang are thrilled and start charging credit to their hearts' content, buying sweaters and watches and expensive chess sets. Jerry, despite his image, is poor. He lives with Joel in a crummy campus dorm, so to him, the credit card is a great boon. But then one day, Joel, who is hypoglycemic, has a sugar crash and needs to go to the hospital, where he unexpectedly dies. Jerry is floored and very upset. He's emotionally fragile because of 'Nam. And now, the bank's computer is asking for independent verification of Henry's identity.
There's a cyborg character involved, a lifelike medical robot named "Proto", that acts as a test patient for med students. "Proto" can affect any known illness, show symptoms, even be operated upon. And he's creepily lifelike. Lisa is trying to load words into Big Brain's memory. Right now she's working on "breathe", but Big B keeps replying "death". Lisa then gets crushed in an elevator. Is Big Brain getting revenge on the hackers? This stuff is fascinating, because it predicts AI, and of course HAL was doing that in "2001" in 1968, and I'm sure you could find references to AI in a 1930s book or movie, and even in the 19th century work of HG Wells. But here, it's like you're watching a direct preview of today. The only difference is the size of the equipment; the computer takes up the entire room. But everything else is the same. Avery even uses the phrase "logging on". PCs only became available for home use around 1982, and even then, only a handful of folks had them. It wasn't until 1994 that home computers began to be widely owned, and then it wasn't until 97/98 that the World Wide Web became well known, and dot com, and then the whole thing finally took off. But this movie was 27 years before that.
At one point, after Jerry is killed in a most gruesome way, Karen does some research on Avery and finds out he was in a mental institution as a teen. I must cut in to observe that we've had a lot of mental institutions and technological themes of late. The local sheriff is investigating Lisa's suspicious death, and is told by Big Brain's head technician that BB runs "everything mechanical on campus" including the lights, electricity, even the elevator. The explanation suggests that BB could have malfunctioned and caused the elevator to crush Lisa. But the sheriff doesn't buy it: "I may be dumb, but I thought the whole idea behind computers is that they never make a mistake?"
The technician is compassionate toward Avery, who everyone thinks is using Big Brain to kill the students who forced him into the credit card scheme. But, as the technician explains, "They don't know that a computer is not a living thing. It only does what a human being tells it to do." And I have to cut in to say that I wish folks wouldn't worry about AI. I mean, I hate all the hype also, but the bottom line is that it ain't real! AI only does what Neil deGrasse Tyson tells it to do. So you don't have to worry, or believe all the hubub about AI taking over. It's only the Tyson of Oz behind a curtain.
Two Huge Thumbs Up for this horror/scifi thriller, with a many-layered script involving psychology, technology, PTSD, and robots. There are even supernatural effects that may or may not be rationally explained, and there's even a psycho-killer mental hospital sequence. There's a ton of stuff going on, and it must be said that Dean Stockwell is a tremendous actor, to go from "The Boy with Green Hair", to this movie in 1971, to becoming The Suavest Man Alive in "Blue Velvet". Then there's the story of James Stacy, which is tragic. He was born Maurice Elias, half-Lebanese but with All-American Kurt Russell looks. IMDB says his idol was James Dean, and like Dean, he too had a terrible accident, in his case on his motorcycle, which he rides in this film. It was in the news for a long time, because he lost an arm and a leg. His subsequent recovery and eventual return to acting was made into a TV Movie, but the rest of his life was an ongoing struggle, with residual pain, and setbacks, and addiction to prescription pills. He also had legal issues in the '90s, related to sexual abuse, and a suicide attempt in Hawaii. You can see his tempestuous personality in his role in this movie, when he was still physically all in one piece. The picture is soft but watchable. ////
The previous night's motion picture was "The Maze"(1953), which I had a feeling we'd seen, and we had, way back in June 2020, three months into Covid. 2020 feels like an isolated year, it's really weird. It's impossible to believe that Covid was almost 4 years ago, and for us, with our movies, it resulted in the YouTube era which we have yet to break free of. But "The Maze" was worth a second view. It's far out as sci-fi goes, and the print was in Blu Ray condition. Instead of writing a new review, I'll just give you a link to the first one. Here it is: https://adlanders.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-maze-starring-richard-carlson-and.html
You may have to copy-and-paste it. The only thing I'd change is my opinion of the ending, which I initially thought was cheesy. Now, I think it's profoundly moving (and shocking), as director William Cameron Menzies intends it to be. Richard Carlson explains it, in exposition, otherwise we'd never understand it. After all, who's ever heard of Tetralogy? Two Huge Thumbs Up for this movie, but do read my initial review. First impressions are the most accurate, excepting in this case my opinion of said ending. ////
And now, we need more reading material, because of the shortened second review. So, to finish out this blog and give your expected money's worth (and this being October, which means horror) I just so happen to have finished Stephen King's "Holly" two days ago. That's his latest book. If you don't know Holly Gibney, she's Steve's main (only?) recurring character, the only one for certain who has warranted her own set of books. Holly is a woman, now middle-aged but youthful, who became a private detective by an accident of fate. She may be mildly autistic. SK hasn't specified that, but all her characteristics say "yes". And, she somehow, also by fate, gets involved in the most gruesome of cases. This time, in "Holly", she's investigating the disappearance of a female college student. And what ensues, folks, may be the most horrific story King has ever written. I realize that's a subjective opinion, because how does one qualify "most horrific" with a writer like Stephen King, right?
It may have hit me that way, as his most horrific book, because his Protagonists of Evil are two college professors, who kidnap and imprison unsuspecting victims. If that sounds familiar, it's because you know that the same thing happened to me: I was kidnapped by a college professor in September 1989. Steve even says, "everyone knows they're crazy" meaning some college professors, because it goes with the territory of Thinking You Know It All, which is one of King's themes in this book.
But as much as I was tortured, and as much as my kidnapper deserves to be run through a wood chipper, then glued back together and run through it again, and then sent to a place worse than hell for over a million years, well...... these people are even worse, the college professors in this book, and that's because Stephen King thought them up. Steve knows evil, it's his business. He's not just a writer but an informer, he tattles on evil and we need him. So that's my filler for this blog. And none of this minimizes the evil of the man who kidnapped me, which will be detailed in my own current book. Anyone got a wood chipper handy?
My blogging music was Klaus Schulze's "The Dresden Performance". My late night is Wagner Rienzi. I hope your week is going well and I send you Tons of Love, as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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