{"id":7235,"date":"2011-11-07T03:14:51","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T07:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=7235"},"modified":"2011-11-07T03:15:39","modified_gmt":"2011-11-07T07:15:39","slug":"the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=7235","title":{"rendered":"The Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In the history of fantastic bad ideas, none may seem as foolhardy as the fact that Ed Hunt, the director of the schlocky Canadian horror film The Brain,<\/em> originally intended for the titular character, an alien from outer space encased in gelatinous goo who wants to use TV to brainwash the human race, the ability to talk. This is not a comedic-musical featuring a giant Venus Flytrap such as in Little Shop of Horrors<\/em>. This isn\u2019t even a bunch of hyper-intelligent apes intent on taking over San Francisco (making sure they dress appropriately in a stylish sweater and jeans combo) as in Rise of the Planet of the Apes<\/em>. No, The Brain <\/em>is a movie where\u2026 Well, wait a minute. What if I had an opportunity to actually interview The Brain? Maybe he could talk all along and Ed Hunt thought better of it, or maybe believed that The Brain\u2019s enormous intellect might overwhelm the audience\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Adam Lippe<\/strong>: So, Mr. Brain, I want to thank you for consenting to an interview. I know you\u2019re a busy entity, and you have some mind control to get to.<\/p>\n

The Brain<\/strong>: Indeed, I have many other things I could be doing, so you best hurry this along.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>AL<\/strong>: I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t ask you the most basic question, because it isn\u2019t at all clear in the film. What is it exactly that you want? What do you gain from having humans commit suicide and attacking each other? Is it because there are more of you waiting in the wings?<\/p>\n

TB<\/strong>: As if I would tell you my plans! I gave strict instructions to keep my motivations vague in the film. Next question\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>AL<\/strong>: Okay then. So, there isn\u2019t much to go on in terms of your origins, other than that you were designed by the same team that put together the effects for Aliens <\/em>and The Fly<\/em>. You do look a lot more rubbery than I had expected though, especially during the sequences where you move around and-<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>TB<\/strong>: I resent the accusation that I was \u201ccreated\u201d by anyone! I may have been \u201cinspired by\u201d certain pre-existing elements in a similar way that you humans were. Of course, my composition is a lot more complex and infinitely more efficient.<\/p>\n

AL<\/strong>: When you say inspired by, do you mean like the scenes where you attack the hero Jim Majelewski, rather, he has hallucinations while in his car that your tongue is controlling his steering wheel causing him to wreck? That seemed indebted to A Nightmare on Elm Street<\/em>. And the whole notion of alien mind control using television as a middle man is not particularly new, whether it is from David Cronenberg\u2019s Videodrome<\/em> or John Carpenter\u2019s They Live<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>TB<\/strong>: First of all, Mr. Hunt had no knowledge of They Live, <\/em>as that was released the same year as his biography of me. Second, I think you\u2019re just using the fact that we shot in Canada and some of the crew members worked on The Fly <\/em>to connect us to Cronenberg<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

AL<\/strong>: No, I\u2019d say that apart from the occasional accents that slip, there are other connections to Cronenberg. What did seem strange was for a film so obviously not <\/em>made in the US, were the attempts to pretend it was. Like that dialogue where Jim is being chastised by his school\u2019s principal (or was it his guidance counselor, a lot of the details are fudged in the early scenes), \u201cyou\u2019re not an American. You\u2019re a teenager.\u201d Well, he\u2019s neither a teenager nor<\/em> an American.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>TB<\/strong>: I don\u2019t know much about how your schooling works, but on my planet we complete our studies long before we reach the age of 25, which appears to be the age Jim is. By the way, I found it unfortunate that Mr. Hunt spends so much time with Jim. It is my<\/em> story, not his.<\/p>\n

AL<\/strong>: I have to agree with that, Jim is an arrogant twerp, none-too-likable and I have to admit I was rooting for you throughout the film. As for what you asked earlier about Cronenberg, it\u2019s not just the hospital sterility and the Canadian locations, but even the way the buildings are designed, it all looks and feels like Scanners<\/em> or one of his very early shorts like Crimes of the Future<\/em>. And the fact that the surrogate you use to communicate with the public is a figure played by Re-Animator<\/em>\u2019s David Gale, who seems clearly based on Videodrome\u2019<\/em>s Brian O\u2019Blivion, <\/em>especially with his very \u201cun-realness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>TB<\/strong>: Now you\u2019re just spouting nonsense. Mr. Gale, who portrayed Dr. Blakely, wasn\u2019t my surrogate, he was my vessel, but he was still a dope who could be convinced that running a show called Independent Thinking<\/em> that was about the exact opposite wouldn\u2019t seem suspicious. Well, suspicious to anyone with my <\/em>brain power. Besides, Dr. Blakely is an exaggeration, a composite of real-life characters that Mr. Hunt had to combine for time.<\/p>\n

AL<\/strong>: And for fear of a lawsuit?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>TB<\/strong>: It never would have made it to trial. But to explain all of the little details would have expanded the running time to an interminable length for those with a human level of patience.<\/p>\n

AL<\/strong>: But you said yourself that your kind was more concise than ours, which doesn\u2019t explain why you let Mr. Hunt pad out the running time with so many chase scenes of people running down endless hallways.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>TB<\/strong>: Well, I didn\u2019t have final cut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the history of fantastic bad ideas, none may seem as foolhardy as the fact that Ed Hunt, the director of the schlocky Canadian horror film The Brain, originally intended for the titular character, an alien from outer space encased in gelatinous goo who wants to use TV to brainwash the human race, the ability […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,18],"tags":[777,4189,5188,291,7063,3196,8389,1180,8384,8390,35,8387,8383,3370,2945,8388,242,3313,4600,310,2940,5189,246,8385,2847,4070,262,276,192,8382,2535,2009,8391,3514,8386,609],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}