"Mustard? Now Let's Not Be Silly..."
You don't want to go amongst mad people.

Nonsense. Have you ever tried to right something that was nonsensical, and didn't sound like so many lines of bullsh!t? Or similarly, did you ever have any kids in art class (or God forbid art school) who tried to do Dali or any other surrealist? Ugh, the horror.

I guess a pretty good starting place would be whether you've had anyone tell you about "a really weird dream,' to which you replied "Ummm...And?" Let's face it, for the most part the dream is unique to the person but not unique in the greater scheme of dreams. Even parts of dreams aren't necessarily all that unique. Like how many of you have had a person in a dream constantly change from one person to the next like costume changes at some pop star concert? And later, the only really odd aspect of the whole thing was that if you remembered that part of the dream, you realized you didn't think anything odd of all the changes at the time.

And how many of you have or had friends that go running for a dream 'guide' or 'dictionary' each morning when they wake up? Ok, probably not many. But how many of you will thumb through one if you see it lying on a friend's coffee table?

The best thing about those books is that whether they are based on New Age crap or Psychology-babble, they amount to about the same thing: ummm....not much. Well, in my estimation, but that opinion was formed by one of the first guys to say something on the subject, Sigmund Freud. It's a common enough expression, but to me it speaks volumes on the subject: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

For those of you who aren't versed in the Freudian intepretation of dreams, a cigar is normally considered a phallic symbol...and oh hell, if I had to read all that stuff, you should have to read it to. Go look it up. Anyhow, based on the context, it can be interpreted to mean different things. However, as I pointed out, Dr. Freud also said that sometimes it is just what it is and nothing more. By virtue of that alone, I then argue that the same can be said for any object in a dream. Perhaps you really are dealing with repressed issues about your parents, and more likely your brain is simply rehashing and combing through that drunken frat party you went to and the tail end of the Bond flick you caught on TNT.

Ok, ok, I'll concede that if you keep dreaming about the same sh!t over and over again, then yes, maybe you are working on a healthy dose of psychosis. And even if I don't believe that there's all kinds of meaning to whatever dream you had, I do know that the dream state of sleep is very important to your health.

Oh, and on the New Age front....well, maybe Native Americans were on to something with their take on dreams and what they told. But then, I think their psyches were stripped down to a simple life at hand and a spirituality beyond, and so I'm more likely to believe they were in touch with something than your and my modern life pop culture addled brains. The rest of the stuff in that section of your local book megamart is...how can I put this...bullsh!t. How's that?

Besides the fact, as far as prophecying goes, haven't their been enough cautionary future vision stories that worn that constantly trying to predict the future usually leads to an impotent inability to affect anything? I think there has.

If anything, Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven (the book, you see not either of the movies) said the most in book form that I ever cared to read about.

So back to my initial thought, if you find dreams to be pretty mundane stuff no matter how 'weird' you're assured they'll be, then maybe you can understand where I'm coming from. Either that or you have absolutely no imagination or sense of vision, so when it comes to that weird stuff, you just don't get it.

But another thing I'd like to clear up is: No drugs involved.

You know, I've been drawing since the 5th grade or so, and writing short stories and whatnot since high school. Nothing was ever more insulting than when someone made an asinine remark to the effect of: "You must've been f*cked up when you wrote this." Well, no, actually, I wasn't. Come to think of it, I've never gotten anything creatively achieved while "f*cked up" on anything. Come to think of it more, all those kids back in school who used to call themselves artists and poets spent a lot more time "f*cked up" than doing anything creative.

It still happens every now and again, but I would've thought after all the material done on the stupidity of "pot thoughts" that it wouldn't be an issue. (You know, I've heard it on the radio a couple of times where people recorded their ramblings after smoking up. It always boils down to "man, that was stupid, but it sounded so good at the time.) Now, I'm not saying that none of the great artists weren't on something at one time or another. Hell there was one period that could be typified by one word: Absinthe. The funniest thing about that being that everyone I know who tried it was disappointed that nothing happened. Hmm, well let's think about that...Considering most of these folks were often on other stuff and had been drinking the absinthe for many years and you tried it once...yeah, I don't understand why it didn't "work."

Back to the greats...yeah, well, like I said, I admit that some of them did. In most of those cases (and even some cases I've seen first hand), it becomes a crutch and those folks can't create without it. Then, eventually, their reliance on their drug of choice causes them to lose their vision all together. At that point, they've got a great addiction and nothing to show for it.

So, nonsense.

I kinda used to be able to do it. Just come up with wacky off the cuff stuff, but man it takes a special talent to make anything of any size or length that holds it together. Think of Kentucky Fried Movie or Airplane! versus all of the knockoffs. Some of the knockoffs were kind of funny, but none of them could ever consistently hold it together.

Part of the wacky factor is a lot like the shock factor. If you're doing it on purpose (we'll talk about the other in a moment), you have to keep figuring out ways to up the ante. Eventually though, there's just nowhere else to go. You can't be anymore wacky or shocking. You've just got to hope that it happens in the last 5 minutes of your movie or at least after the big climax. And of course, the next project has to be even bigger and badder than that...well, at least in the commonly mediated forms, you could probably do a lot more paintings before it got old (but in that series, you'd have to be consistent). The problem on some level, particularly with shock, is that the public just begins to accept what you do (not necessarily the message, just the antics), and it's just not surprising anymore. When's the last time anyone freaked about anything Marilyn Manson did? But think about when he first appeared. When Shout at the Moon came out, I don't think anyone ever pictured Ozzy as a loveable sitcom patriarch...

Dammit, I keep veering toward the intentional, and that's not it at all. Well intentional in that it's your vision and so that's what you communicated. Whether Lewis Carroll was on opium or not, he wrote Alice in Wonderland the way he wrote it. I think a good look through his poetry proves that the guy was working in a singular style all his own. Magritte painted what he wanted. Sure some of that surrealist stuff may look the same as the stuff coming out of arts and crafts class at the psyche ward, but look long enough and you'll see that the former is the product of vision and the latter is how those people see things.

What I really wanted to get into was the unintentional "visionaries." Folks who made beautifully surreal things like Hercules vs. The Moon Men. Now you can say that that was just taking two popular concepts of the time and trying to moosh them together. Well, I agree, but that personally wouldn't have been what I would have thought of to do. Then there's all the bizarre stuff in the movies like that.

After all, having watched enough movies, I have to say that in a field that costs so much money and expects big returns it takes balls to look at your cast and crew, and say: "F*ck the script. I know what the script says. But think about this. Wouldn't it be cool if (Insert Bizarro Nonsensical Sequence Here)...?" Now the cast and crew may have been like, "whatever you want, mac," but they did it anyway. What's even stranger is that you could hand this movie in to the producers and more often than not, whether it made money or not, they'd give you more money to go do it again!

That my friends is f*cking beautiful! Absolutely!

Now I'm sure some of these people got to the editing room and thought to themselves "Whoa, maybe that thing with rear projection and the stock footage whale and the toy helicopter crashing into the Empire State Building wasn't such a good idea for this scene." But the others had to be watching it thinking that it was the best thing ever because they did something just like it in the next movie.

For a second realize that I'm not talking about creative low budget filmmaking. I don't mean the kind of stuff where you figure out some way of doing the car crash without showing the car crash. Sure, a lot of that goes horrible wrong, but not in the same way. That's trying to be economical and not being good at it. Now what I AM talking about is stuff that even though it would be low budget today was at least middle of the road or higher.

Granted it's a little too high in the ranks to serve a good example but consider Barbarella. That movie doesn't make much sense at all, and doesn't seem to really be trying to; however, don't for a moment think that that was Roger Vadim's last time in the director's chair. Now maybe it's just a sign of how uncreative our times are, but I bet you can't imagine them making Barbarella exactly the same today. In fact, they're talking about remaking it, and a comment I read said something to the effect: "Yeah, you could remake it all slick and cool, but it would take out everything that made it fun in the first place."

Hmmmm...think Thunderbirds.

Come to think of it, any time Lewis Carroll anymore is a constant focus on whether he was on drugs or a pedophile. Now, I've already talked about the former and I certainly don't condone the latter, but Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are still two of my favorite stories. And Jabberwocky is it's own sense of twisted genius.

Speaking of Jabberwocky, I'd say that Terry Gilliam certainly has the vision for the wacky, weird, absurd, and satirical. Hell, who beside Monty Python ever pulled off that long and popular run of comedy that bizarre? Now, I love the Kids in the Hall and they were weird, but they rarely go that full-blown Gonzo weird.

Anyhow, I don't know that I could do it. But lately....I wanna try.

Cheers.