Roller Ball Drink Tank

8/3/2019 Roller Ball Drink Tank

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IN all this work I’m doing for Issue 300, I may well have missed a few LoCs. This seems to happen to

me once in a while, and it’s not like I get a lot of LoCs normally, so I wanna make sure I run them all! If

your’s is missing, lemme know!

Of the ones I’ve got, let’s start with Eric Mayer!

Chris,I don’t know, Chris. Touting Warren Buff for TAFF and then letting him trash The Rocky Horror Picture

Show in the same issue. Is that a good campaigne strategy or a bad one?

Well, the fact that someone is able and willing to take counter arguments to popular positions and be

able to explain them is a good one in my eyes! And Warren’s articles are pretty awesome!

I very much enjoyed reading those two conflicting articles, however, and especially your analysis. Definite-

ly some stuff I hadn’t thought about. But look, here’s the thing, Rocky Horror is one of the monumental artistic

achievements of human civilization. I mean, it’s obvious. The movie speaks for itself.

I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I will say that as a social construct, it is everythign that movies can be

participatory spectacle with strongly attached feelings from the viewers mingling with the film itself.

Well, okay to some people. I think it is one of those things some people just “get” and some don’t. And

no reflection on those who don’t get it. Not saying they are wrong. It is just a movie that instantly grabs somepeople, for who knows what reason.

Perhaps it has something to do with the viewer’s expectation of what a ‘Film’ or a ‘Movie’ is and what

function it plays. Those who watch movies for the sheer enjoyment of the story being told may not be

able to connect with Rocky.

I seem to have spent most of my life involved with stuff that a few people “get.” Like, for example, ori-

enteering, or mini-comics, or Interactive Fiction or, yes, sf fanzines. Stuff that you either immediately say, “Wow

Cool! The greatest!” or “meh, that’s stupid.” And in all those cases I couldn’t say exactly why they grabbed me

Kind of inexplicable, like love at first sight. And I think you know immediately. No matter how many times Warren

saw Rocky Horror or how many exlanations of it he read, it wouldn’t connect with him. Maybe heis more sane

than some of us.

As a guy who has also spent a lot of his life involved in things that people don’t get, or at least don’t get

in the way that I get it, it’s an obvious thing to consider Rocky. IT combines so many things (science fic-

tion, horror, musicals, throwing things, general silliness) that people tend not to cotton, so there’s that!

I will say that Rocky Horror is an odd case where there are a lot more people than usual with these sorts

of things who get it. There must be more Rocky Horror fans than sf fanzine fans or even orienteers.

That is almost certainly true, and the over-lap is also probably pretty serious. I’m betting that people

made their way into SF Fandom through Rocky, though I’m not sure if it worked that way for Orien-

teers...

I saw one midnight showing of Rocky Horror in Manhattan, (went with Tim Marion) and it was terrific

Mary and I also saw the stage version when we were living in Rochester, NY and I have to say the pacing is prob-

Letter Graded MailSent by our Gent le Readers

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ably better than the movie. The only bad thing I can say about the movie is that it slows down a little too much

towards the end. Although I can’t think what would be taken out.

Best,

Eric

Thanks, Eric! ANd now... John Purcell!

Only five more issues to go, buddy, until the big 3-0-0. Can you feel the excitement? Can you stand the

heat? Can you tell I’m searching for another parallelism?

It is slowly eating me alive!A couple things to say about your latest issue. First off, good luck to Warren Buff, Kim Kofmel, and my

nominee, Jacq Monahan, in this year’s TAFF election. This is a wonderful group of candidates, and I would be

happy with any of them winning the race. Of course, I am supporting Jacq, but that doesn’t mean I will go out

of my way and diss the others. Far from it. At FenCon VIII/DeepSouthCon 49 last month (is it already that long

ago? Dang, times goes fast) I finally had the chance to meet Warren - I think Kim was there too, but I’m not

sure; do you know if she was there? - and had a grand time talking with him. He and I sat at the same table in

the Hearts Tournament (a DSC tradition, you know), and the man’s a good card (har-har) all the way around. A

nice guy, definitely. Good luck to all the TAFF candidates!

Warren’s good people. I wish I had more chances to hang out with him. The entire ballot is good folks

and you can’t go wrong... unless you don’t vote for Warren!Rocky Horror Picture Show is one of those movies you either like or hate. There isn’t an in-between

on this flick. I don’t like it that much either, unlike Warren who flat out states he can’t stand the movie. It is

definitely an acquired taste, probably something that one can enjoy if you get into the RHPS mindset, wear the

costumes, and get deep into the /p/l/a/k/t/o/w/ audience participation. This past March, Valerie finally saw the

full-blown audience thing at Aggiecon 42; she had never experienced it before, but had seen the movie a couple

times years ago. Midnight showings of RHPS are an Aggiecon tradition, so Val took advantage of our member-

ship and observed this, er, psycho-social phenomenon. I wrote about it in Askance #23 (June 2011), in case

anybody wants to read my con report.Suffice to say that she wished that the audience members would have

shut up in some places so that she could actually hear the movie. As a cultural oddity, though, experiencing an

RHPS showing is something else.

At any rate. I think I’ll wrap this up by saying I think I enjoy the music score to RHPS way more than themovie itself. It is good music, that’s for sure. The movie does give a left-handed compliment to all the whacked-

out sci-fi B-movies of the 1950s, and if you watch Rocky Horror Picture Show with that in mind, I think a

person might enjoy it more. Still, the bottom line is that RHPS is one of those either-or movies. ‘Nuff said.

How about that? You got another loc out of me. It has been awhile, hasn’t it? I can guarantee it won’t be

the last one, either.

All the best,

John Purcell

I love the songs. Genevieve, Evelyn’s mom, grew up with those as her bedtime songs. While my Dad

went for years, I only heard the music when it showed on KTLA in the early 1980s.

And now... Lloyd Penney

Dear Chris:

Greetings, good sir! This is always happening these days, I have two issues of The Drink Tank to respond

to. If nothing else, you are prolific, and I’m trying to be as prolific as I can be in keeping up. Here come comments

on issues 293 and 294.

293...There’s that craggy old face, someone who should still be with us; he’d be absolutely gobsmacked

and mad as hell at what’s happening today, and he’d probably take a stroll down to Wall Street, and join in the

demonstration. (I hear the whole thing’s about to be shut down...so much for freedom of speech and assem-

bly.)



You know, Linda put it best last night. The Occupy Oakland thing is happening right between her work

and home, and the whole thing was quite inconvenient, even moreso when the cops started tear-gassing

people.

Linda - They can protest long as they want, just some place else.

Chris - We need another VIetnam, thin out their ranks a little...

My loc...well the CPU came back from the shop missing lots of malware and some useful information, too

but with some reinstallations and some investigative work, everything is back to normal. Keep the buzz going

man, and your friends will definitely help out. When Facebook tires, some face-to-face is always good.

Hey, be careful. You never know when that malware might come in handy!When you won the rocket, some thought this was a joke or a planned performance. Your closest friends

know better, this was totally off the cuff, and totally honest. Who knows, your rocket might get a companion next

year. Keep every moment like this, and treasure it forever.

I plan on doing just that!

I remember watching Beany and Cecil when I was a kid, blissfully unaware of the fannish cache behind it

I loved it because of the characters and the music, but I think the reason I liked it most of all was that my par-

ents hated it. I haven’t seen it on television in decades, but not that I think of it, it’s probably somewhere in the

morass of the Net, or available on DVD. Some of the Hanna-Barbera characters got little showing, and perhaps

I liked them of all the HB cartoon cast. The only thing I liked about the Scooby Doo cartoons was the regular

near-ending line, “And I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids.” I’ve even heard thatline in other cartoons.

I loved Scooby, but I was at exactly the right age to love Scrappy-Doo!

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was a science fiction writer in our eyes, and more. SF was just one thing he wrote. Von-

negut had things to say, criticism to make, opinions to express, and he expressed those opinions and so much

more in his books. As I said above, I’d wonder what he’d have to say/write about the current financial situation

in the world. Slaugherhouse-5 was partially autobiographical, and then as a way to try to forget the horrors wit-

nessed, the plot of the novel was whisked away to Trafalmador. I would like to think this couldn’t be written today

but yet, there are similar horrors coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

(Billy Pilgrim? Scott Pilgrim? I have to wonder... Coincidence? Both Pilgrims wound up in fantastic

worlds...)

Scott had better women in his life.294...I read the original novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, and I saw the original movie, but did not see the remake

Some memories you just don’t want to see changed.

The official cause of Steve Jobs’ death was respiratory arrest due to his pancreatic cancer, I believe. I have

tried to be familiar with the technology, even though I can’t afford to buy any of it. (I saw that a major computer

Art by Sue Mason



programmer, inventor of C, died recently, too.) The TAFF ballot...Kim Kofmel used to live in Kitchener and Lon-

don and Toronto, and used to be seen at all our local conventions. And, I’d vote for the Novas if I was eligible...

I would vote too! I love the Novas!

Hello, John Coxon! Eventful trip in the States, wot? I expect that we’re fellow communists here, what with

us enjoying and benefiting from socialized medicine. We found that American food was fine, about what we have

here, only that the servings are two to three times bigger than what I’m used to here. We did a small grocery

order in Reno because we had a small, empty bar fridge in our room. (We did the same thing in Montreal...we

did a full grocery order in the way there because we has a small kitchenette in our room, and while we didn’t go

out often, we had regular breakfasts and even bag lunches to bring to the con. Our stomachs thanked us for it.) John had a good time. I kept trying ot get him to come and live out this way!I loved the food in Reno

Typically, Linda and I try and bring at least some food to live off of at cons, but in Reno, we found severa

places we enjoyed. Linda loves Jimboy’s Tacos, while I found myself in love with the food at the Atlantis

The Peppermill had a couple of good eatin’ places, and they’re drinks were pretty strong! The best food

i had all trip was with Linda and JOhn at Fire + Ice in Tahoe.

The Smurfs...Ottawa fandom, when it was still extant many years ago, hated the Smurfs. Local fans would

Smurf cookies, general oatmeal cookies with lots of blue food colouring. We all had buttons that said Nuke the

Smurfs!

Time to go...I am making a big spaghetti dinner tonight. Time to get cooking. Thanks for another two stel-

lar issues, and I’d better get moving...the sauce won’t cook itself. Seeya!

Yours, Lloyd Penney.



I have a theory. Rollerball is the best science fiction film of the 1970s. It’s a difficult to defend position

especially as I am one of the great defenders of Star Wars as the single most important film of the 20th century

but I’ve got some room to work with it. There’s the fact that it’s a straight science fiction film, no fantasy ele-

ments like those that permeate Star Wars (until Lucas ruined it by explaining it all away biologically). It’s also ful

of differing types of speculation. Speculation on the nature of corporations, on the path of sport, on the mean-

ing of government, on the meaning of heroes, on the meaning of villains, on what humans need to feel alive, and

surprisingly, on the meaningless of life and death when facing off against soul-crushing oppression.

Yes, I’m going to be talking about Occupy Wall Street, but don’t worry, it’s not until after I’ve dug through

the rest of this mile-deep mine of science fiction awesomeness.

The story of Rollerball is the story of Jonathan E., the greatest player in the history of Rollerball, a sport

that combines elements of motorcross, roller derby, hockey and football. It’s a fully thought-out concept for asport. I’ve never read William Harrison’s The Rollerball Murders, on which the movie was based, but it seems like

the Rollerball team took advantage of the crazes of the early and mid-1970s. The Roller Derby craze of 1969-

1972 had ended, the number one roller derby league owned by Jerry Seltzer had folded, and while there was stil

derby around the world, it was no longer the major sport that it had been. One of the things that is forgotten

today is that with the exception of Joanie Weston and Ann Calvello, the major stars of 1960s and 70s derby were

all men. The sport was the most physical of the day, and it penetrated deep into the national consciousness.

Motorbikes had been popular with various portions of American society forever, I think. Well, at least

as far back as the time when people started attaching motors to bikes. The early 1970s saw an explosion of

interest in motorcycles due to one man: Evel Kenevil, the greatest daredevil motorcycle jumper the world had

52 Weeks to Science Fict ion Film Literacy - Rollerball



was expanding, the Super Bowl was only a few years old, but the combination of the Pittsburgh Steelers, char-

acters like Joe Willy Nameth, and ABC’s Monday Night Football, the NFL was about to explode into becoming

America’s top sport.

Of course, this was a weird one to think about because Rollerball, the most American of all 1970s science

fiction films, was directed by a Canadian; Norman Jewison.So, as I was saying, Jonathan has been the star of the Rollerball league for ages, and now, the Energy Cor-

poration wants him to retire. The teams, while named after the cities where they are headquartered, are the

fronts for the Corporations. Governments have fallen and the Corporations are the de facto governments. There

were a series of Corporate Wars that had ended and, as I understand it, Rollerball had risen as a way to quiet any

unrest from the masses. It gives them something to get behind, some way to adore the Corporation in a way that

is not direct. It’s a brilliant technique, and I think it was influenced by Japan. Japanese Baseball has teams like the

Nippon Ham Fighters. For years, I thought it was the Ham Fighters of Nippon, figuring Ham Fighters were some

sort of traditional Japanese warrior class who were paid in cured pork. This was incorrect. It was the Nippon

Ham team. Traditionally, Japanese baseball teams are named after the corporations that back them. This culture

that has risen in the world of Rollerball seems to have a lot of influence from Japanese corporate culture at the

time. There is strong connection between the people and their Corporations, and that was always seen as thestrength of Japan at the time when we were first seeing the cracks in American automobile production.

Jonathan doesn’t want to retire, and their attempts to convince him to do so aren’t exactly working

largely because they’ve tried to control him over the years, including stealing his wife from him, who happened

to be played by the second hottest woman of the 1970s, Maud Adams. She was awesome, but she was no Jessica

Lange. Anyhow, Jonathan doesn’t want to retire because he’s the best player anywhere and he can still go.

Guess what I’m gonna talk about now.

That’s right, wrestling.

Jonathan doesn’t want to be out of the limelight, and he knows he can still go. Even if it would be the best

thing for the Corporation, or the team, he doesn’t want to let go and is willing to let others go to keep his time

in the spotlight, though that’s a bit too easy of an explanation, really. The Corporation wants him to retire, has

offered him a great deal and as the film goes along, shows that it’s willing to offer him even more to get him away

from the game.

Why? Well, as John Houseman, who is the most awesome part of Rollerball, explains, it’s all about keep-

ing the Corporation as the focus. No Player is Bigger than The Game. Now, bringing this back to wrestling and

sports in general, that last saying is so not true. All sports that have ever made it to the Big Time have done so

on the backs of players who were bigger than the game. In Cricket, it was William Grace, a man so great at the

game that mustard companies had bidding wars to see who would get to use him image in their advertising. In

Baseball, it was Ty Cobb and later Babe Ruth who turned baseball into the huge deal it’s been. In boxing, names

like Jack Dempsey, Jack Johnson and Joe Louis who made it, and then Muhammad Ali who took it to much higher

levels than it had ever been, and it was happening during the time the film was written and made.

ever known. There was a huge pop

in sales following each of his major

jumps. ABC’s Wide, Wide World o

Sports was an anthology show that

used various sports, mostly the less-

er sports like boxing, horse racing

pool and sometime derby, used the

jumps to get huge ratings. Motorcy-

cles would have been very much inthe attention of the average Ameri-

can.

Hockey was also at a peak in

the US at that time, largely due to

names like Gordie Howe. Footbal



The best example, and it’s the most perfect one, is wrestling. It is a sport that’s always been built around

names and characters who are bigger than wrestling. In the early 1900s, it was William Muldoon, the first big

name in pro wrestling, a man who was so respected that a fake ‘rassler was chosen to head up the New York

State Athletic Commission (and he also started the Police Athletic League). In the 1920s, it was Mr. Ed Strangler

Lewis. In the 1950s, Gorgeous George, who was the biggest star that the sport had ever seen. Far bigger than

the sport of wrestling. Jonathan is much bigger than Rollerball, and it makes him even more dangerous to the

Corporation. Their hold on their empires are based on Bread & Circuses, it would seem, and Rollerball to slake

the bloodlust is an important component.

OK, this leads us to Occupy Wall Street. Movements, at least the most successful ones, are lead by apersonality. The reason that the Peace Movement of the 1960s never changed the world as they had hoped was

that they never had a major singular figure who could be the focus. There were a number of people who played

major roles, but no one central figure to focus things into the laser that could have gone all the way. Occupy Wal

Street has that problem, no central focus, and they see it as a selling point. Give them a singular person to push

everything forward, to make it a real movement. Why did the Civil Rights movement go so far while the Hippies

didn’t manage to do much of anything before they sold out? Martin Luther King, Medger Evans, etc. Names that

went forward and became massively important. The fear the corporation was feeling was that Jonathan would

turn people against the Corporations.

Could he have done so? It’s hard to say.

Jonathan has to bring his teamto the Championships, which means

that he has to compete in the fina

three games of the season. The first

game is what opens the film, and it’s

amazing. The single most effective way

of explaining the game is showing it

being played, and they show so much

of the game in the first twenty min-

utes or so that it is perfectly estab-

lished. The cinematography was pretty

exceptional, which helped make ev-erything clearer. The game is fast, high-

speed, everything we’d expect from a

sport of today. The skaters are pulled

by a motor cycle when they are trying

to score, and skaters not being pulled

are blockers who sometimes swoop

down from the upper part of the track

to take out potential point scorers. There are penalties and substitutions, and after a certain number of penalties

(or a serious injury) a player is out of the game. The rule change as the movie goes on, trying to take Jonathan

out.

I am struck by something very interesting: this game would work. I could see it actually being played as a

part of an X-Games-type competition. Yeah, combining motorcycles with skaters presents some serious prob-

lems, but it also makes for more excitement, higher speed, a more modern sort of sport. Many SciFi writers have

theorized about what sports will be in the future and I think Rollerball is one of the best examples of the design-

ers understanding how the thought patterns of future generations would evolve.

As the contests keep going. There are higher and higher body counts, and it’s obvious that the Corpora-

tions are in some kind of cahoots. The trip to Tokyo to compete with their team leads to the game being its most

violent. They kill the young up-and-comer who seems poised to be the next Jonathan, but who obviously doesn’t

have the sort of force of will that Jonathan has, and is therefor less of a threat. There’s a great moment where

Jonathan is called in to sign the papers that will allow the doctors to let the young lad die. Jonathan refuses, which



is an interesting point. Is Jonathan refusing because he fears that he is being trapped, that the kid isn’t really as

damaged as they are saying, or is it that Jonathan simply doesn’t want that blood on his hands. He’s got blood drip-

ping from his digits, even before that point. There’s the classic shot where he flings a guy into the gutter where

the balls get shot out of right before the ball shoots out, obviously killing him. He also allows the other players

of his team to die for the him, or at least for the game itself.

And that’s another great analogy to wrestling. To build a star, one must allow other stars to fall. It is a sport

which drives lives into the ground, damages to joints, backs and marriages. To succeed, you have to be huge, you

have to fight hard, you have to be bigger than life, but you also have to step over every other player, every other

foe. It’s not a sport of mutual support: it’s a sport of salting the Earth after destroying what came before handTo reason why wrestling has not built a character like a Ric Flair or a Hulk Hogan in the last decade and a half

is that the idea of even-steven booking, allowing everyone to get wins on everyone, has held any of them from

really going to the max. Just sayin’ is all.

OK, Jonathan goes on and tries to find out how the Corporations make their decision. They go to Geneva

to see the Mainframe and ask it questions, but it doesn’t give the answers he’s looking for. It’s one of the better

scenes of computers from the 1970s. It’s not a long scene, but you get to see a lot of different parts of the system

working. It’s an interesting scene of the future, especially looking back as it’s a mainframe and we were less than

two years away from the Microcomputer revolution. It’s odd that even so close, no one in Hollywood had any

idea of how the world was going to change. They used Sperry-UNIVAC computers, which was a good choice as

they always had something of the Not-So-Distant Future to their designs.The fall of Governments is an interesting point. The idea that if Governments all fall, they’ll be replaced by

something even bigger, meaner, less interested in the individual is almost Universal. Again, to bring in the current

protest concepts, Occupy Wall Street wants Corporations to have less of a role in the world, while the Tea Party

wants Government to have less power. So, this is a world where the Tea Party has come to fruition! But it’s also

the last thing that the Occupy Wall Street-types want because it would ultimately show that the individual wil

not be at all a factor in decisions. It’s a very interesting world to consider in the light of today’s protest move-

ments.

The music features some

great stuff. There’s Addiago, or as I

know it The Phantom of the Op-

era organ music, which opens andcloses the film and certainly sets

the stage. It’s a piece of music that

has baggage, associated with horror

films since the 1920s, and here it is

used as an intro and outro for Jona-

than. What does that say about him

as a hero? Or is he the villain? Is he

a monster, or is he the brave young

man going to smite the dragon. It’s

an interesting pair of choices. Thescore features some great electronic music, which was starting to become a bit of a cliché in science fiction by

1975. The music was conducted by Andre Previn, who was one of the few celebrity conductors who would work

in film. He was Mr. Mia Farrow at the time, I believe. It’s a good score.

The scenes of the game being played are shot with an eye that is seldom equaled. It’s hard to imagine

shooting something with that many moving parts, but the key to it is that they didn’t shoot it like a sporting event

but like a chariot race. Those are the two possibilities when it comes to shooting a sports scene: you can shoot it

like a football game or a NASCAR race (in fact, many of Michael Bay’s chases are obviously influenced by the way

they shoot Formula One and NASCAR) or you can use the techniques that were developed in the 1920s with

films like Ben Hur (and again in the 1950s and 60s with films like Ben Hur) with is slightly more artistic, but it also

is not as much telling a simple story. The best use of that brand of shooting, or animation as that’s more of what it



was, had to be The Phantom Menace with its beautiful pod-racing scene. There is a lot of artistry, shots of wheels

in motion, traveling shots, not a lot of from above, almost no shots of full field that aren’t used for drama. In fact

the only ones I can think of that give you a large field of vision are the ones that are done at the end showing al

the carnage on the track.

OK, let me say a couple of other things about the message of Rollerball. The last moments of the film, the

final match, features no rules, and everyone dies but Jonathan. After all but two of the opposing teams are dead

a motorcyclist and a skater, and there’s Jonathan. The crowd is silent. This is called Silent Heat in wrestling, and

it’s almost unheard of. It happens when something so incredible happens that the audience has to go silent to

process it. The most famous examples are Bruno Sanmartino getting pinned and losing the title after more than 8years and when The Undertaker debuted with one of the greatest ring entrances of all time. After Jonathan wins

and jams the ball into the goal, he skates around the track, and skates and skates and skates around the track.

And then the crowd goes crazy chanting his name.

There are several things you can read into that ending. The first is that he’s conquered, he’s won the

hearts of the fans, he’s the greatest symbol of victory over the Corporations. You can look at it as Jonathan say

ing that the only thing that matters is the game and not the economics and politics that takes place outside of

the track. The one that I kinda like is that Jonathan is skating in a circle. He’s just skating. He’s going around and

around, all within the realm of the game. He’s not broken out. Yes, he’s won, he’s beaten the Corporation on the

track, but that’s the only place. His revolution is completely tied to the track, to Rollerball, and he’s only done

it for himself. He’s the only survivor. How egotistical do you have to be to allow an entire pair of teams to diein what you know is the Mother of All Contract Disputes. He kills or maims dozen of men simply to be able to

skate around the track and soak in the adoration of the fans.

And maybe that’s the point, that you can’t fight the system except in limited arenas. Every victory is a

phyric victory. There’s no other way to see Jonathan’s victory as being at the cost of so many lives. Was it worth

it? Can Jonathan, ever the competitor, see it as anything other than the ultimate in showboating? Is playing the

game by the rules that are set before you as important as preventing the loss of human life? Is the game bigger

than the Corporations? If he had lost, would things have been any different? I imagine that’s what he was thinking

about as he skated around the track, because if he was willing to sacrifice so many, I don’t see him making plans

to lead a revolution as he took it all in.

Roller Ball Drink Tank

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