Kalorping Against The Jabberwocky

There are many things many people can and will say and think about the somewhat amazing 3D movie, "Alice In Wonderland". Amidst all that, it has fallen to me to speak in relation to this movie in a manner that will surely be regarded by the "uninitiated" as strange - though I suppose that by now I should be quite accustomed to being cast in a role such as this.

Tim Burton, the auteur of the work to which I refer, not only attended CalArts at the same time as myself. Tim Burton has consistently been influenced by me/my work in a major way. "Alice" is no exception.

A woman who was a friend of mine at CalArts also existed in the realm of Tim Burton, has worked with Tim Burton, in fact, according to her website, she was responsible for CG (computer graphics) on "Alice". I do know that she worked on Burton's "Beetlejuice", yet there is nothing to confirm her assertion about "Alice", other than her own statement. I choose to believe her, however, it being that she always liked the low-profile route, and once you've reached a certain height, who really needs all the baggage that comes with being known as someone with that particular kind of status?

I have not spoken with this woman in about 30 years, yet Tim Burton has occasionally been known (to some anyway) to shine the "spotlight" on various things that passed between myself and her all those years ago.

With "Alice", Burton has outdone himself in this regard (and in other regards as well - it really is quite a movie!). No small number of times while watching "Alice" I found myself saying (not aloud), "Hey, that reminds me of a conversation I had about 30 years ago with (blank)." After a while (actually after the first one) it became obvious to me: she had confided the most insignificant things regarding our conversations to Tim Burton, who then instructed the writer of "Alice" to include them in the movie, who then included them in the movie, and then they filmed them for the movie, then edited them into the movie, then made the whole movie 3D (I have no idea how they did that part), put the completed film into film canisters, had someone drive the film canisters to movie theatres around the world, etc. For some people I might have put in the "etc." considerably sooner, but I always like filling people in and keeping the lowest common denominator among us in the loop. It's my inclusive nature.

There were also things in "Alice" that came from my creative work, things of consequence to Tim Burton's movie. I think it unlikely you would recognize these things, however, without knowledge of the fact that Tim Burton often does this in relation to me/my material. You would tend to be oblivious to the context necessary to appreciate my point. If I may therefore ask those of you who don't see eye to eye with me on this to kindly leave so that I may continue speaking with those who know what I'm talking about. Thank you ever so much.

In my Dec. 26, 2009 video, "Steven Spielberg and the 'Mall Man' Factor" (see Archive.Org), I detail how Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," in addition to its numerous references to my "Mall Man" video, also included something from my original "Mall Man" film treatment (sent in '92/'93 to Spielberg's good friend, Sean Daniel, the first person from whom I learned of CalArts). Specifically, I refer to the part in "Indiana Jones" where the statue is restored to wholeness through the returning of its head. And so I recognized something familiar when, in "Alice", significance was attached to Alice restoring wholeness to a suit of armor by bringing its sword to it following a special journey. I know this general concept is not new to various genres of storytelling - however, the shorthands I am "in on" led me to regard this as more specifically having been done as a reference to Spielberg/Steinhoff. It was then that I recalled how in "Alice" there is an important thing where The Mad Hatter's head is restored to his body. I see this as reinforcing my initial impression. Plus the restoration of Indiana Jones' hat to his head in that movie having a Hatter-esque dimension, a device used in the Spielberg film as something to correlate with the crystal skull's being returned to its proper place.

There was another important event in "Alice" that left me with a much stronger sense of my influence. That movie has a very important moment where The Mad Hatter throws his sword onto the ground as if it has suddenly come upon him that the sword is of an alien nature. Around this same exact point in the movie, The Mad Hatter does a very special dance, and for those who have seen the movie (did I forget to say "spoiler alert" somewhere in here?), this special dance of his is not merely in the category of someone dancing on-screen. It is a pre-anticipated, significant moment. Not unlike the extreme specialness of a dance as conveyed in the very first lines of the Procol Harum song, "Whiter Shade of Pale" (following the organ introduction): "We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels 'cross the floor." These song lyrics go well beyond being a mere mention of a dance. And this brings me to this videoclip from my 1998 video, "Kalorping For Gosk, Part 2" ("Gosk 2"):


As for the white dandelion particles we see here and there in "Alice", I apologize, but I am under contract to only discuss such things as they relate to "Avatar".

And again, I postpone for another blog my description of the last moment of Barbara Walters' last Oscar Night interview as it relates to me. You can see how it doesn't belong in the same company as this "Alice" blog.