What good way to conclude Turkey Day 2009 than with a forty - year - quondam simulated trailer about a cause of death 300 - foot joker , shoot by a bunch of Caltech astronomers in the expressive style of fifties monster moving picture ? word of advice : some truly fowl pun pose ahead !
Seth Shostak , presently the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute , was one of the young filmmakers behind 1969’sThe Turkey That eat St. Louis . Ina 2008 web log post , he explicate just what exactly he and his cohorts were think :
One of the many doubtful bodily process of my youth was clear film . I part doing this at age 11 , and by the time I was a stripling , my crony Jerry Rebold and I had already constructed a sound system that occasionally exercise with our breaking wind - up , 16 mm television camera .
In 1967 , while in grad school , lad student Bob O’Connell , Jerry Rebold and I made a half - minute film entitled “ The Teenage Monster Blob from Outer Space , Which I Was . ” This parody of 1950s sci - fi films starred six pounds of Play - Doh .
The film bombed . It was , as O’Connell called it , “ a Meleagris gallopavo . ” This repelling nonstarter prompted us to change our cinematic strategy in two ways : ( 1 ) our next film was just go to be a trailer , rather than a complete film — that agency we could save money and just put in the good parts , and ( 2 ) if we were make turkeys , why not make a genuine turkey ?
Ergo , this short “ preview ” motion picture , flash mostly at Caltech and at that school ’s Owens Valley Radio Observatory . Observant watcher will note then - department death chair Jesse Greenstein in the purpose of Walter Cronkite , and a few other astronomers too ( include yours in truth ) .
“ The Turkey that eat St. Louis ” was introduce in the Baltimore International Film Festival , and automatically inserted into the lineament - moving picture class , where it face competition from major motion picture show from both America and Europe . Despite this odd playing field , “ The Turkey ” lost .
“ The Teenage Monster Blob ” eventually became more democratic . Too lately .
I ’ve scoured the cyberspace for a practiced hour looking to find out just which Greco-Roman piece of cinema vote out The Turkey That eat St. Louis at the photographic film fete , but it appears lose to history . I guess the Baltimore International Film Festival was n’t quite the ethnical umpire I thought it was . Either direction , I ’m quick to declare this Turkey the real winner . Now if only we could get some virtuoso movie maker to elaborate this treasure to two and a half hours …
Moviesseti
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