Click on the images for the BIGGER VIEW
Hello, Pulp Friends,
After "THE SCYTHE", my tribute to Ray Bradbury posted a couple of days ago, I am continuing the celebration of this great writer with a new tribute illustrating his episode for the beloved series TWILIGHT ZONE titled "I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC" (above) and reposting a Pulp Sunday classic (below): the monstrous aliens of "It Came From Outer Space" ("Destinazione... Terra!" in its Italian release), written by Ray Bradbury in 1953and directed by Jack Arnold.
Wish you all a wonderful Pulp Sunday :)
Cheers,
Francesco
Click on the images for the BIGGER VIEW
Artwork © 2009-2012 Francesco Francavilla.
"Watchers from Outer Space" © and TM 2012 Francesco Francavilla.
6 comments:
All three are fantastic. Thanks for using your talents to pay tribute to Bradbury.
Although I saw this episode of the Twilight Zone fairly recently, I can't recall now... was the company that provided the "electric grandmother" called Facsimiles Ltd.?
In Bradbury's short story the company was called Marionettes, Inc. All of Bradbury's robot stories were collected in one book here:
http://www.amazon.com/Marionettes-Inc-Ray-Bradbury/dp/1596062150/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339404808&sr=8-1
Charles: Thank you :)
Dennis: I went and double checked and it's "Facsimile" (singular). This was Ray's first "draft" of the story done for TZ. He went later and developed it as short written tale: changing name of the company might have been to avoid any issues?
Cheers,
Francesco
Hmm... now I'm going to have to look for the book and check copyright dates. I always assumed the TZ screenplay was based on an existing RB story, not the other way around. But I'm fairly certain Ray had already written other stories featuring Marionettes Inc before penning the TZ screenplay.
Whether the name change was made to Ray's screenplay by someone else prior to filming, or Ray changed it from Facsimile Ltd to Marionettes Inc later when he published it as a prose story to bring it in line with his other robot stories is an interesting question.
Ah, I should have checked first before posting. My memory betrays me. The story was first published in "McCalls" magazine as "The Beautiful One Is Here". The children's mother had just died, and their father got them a wonderful 'humanoid-gene mini-circuited, rechargeable AC-C Mark V Electrical Grandmother' from Fantoccini Ltd.
Maybe it's the Italian branch of Marionettes Inc. - or a competitor (stands to reason they wouldn't have a monopoly). Fantoccini does sound like Facsimilie, but the shades of meaning when referring to a humanoid robot replica are slightly different. The former refers to an "animated" inanimate object with the semblance of life whose strings can be pulled, while the latter emphasizes the "imitation of life" or "not genuine" aspect. Perhaps Fantoccini was changed to Facsimile because most American viewers would not have been familiar with the word.
Wow, it turns out that "The Beautiful One Is Here" wasn't published until 1969, seven years AFTER the TZ episode. Yet I've seen several erroneous references to the TZ story being "based on a short story" by Bradbury. It is strange that he changed the title (not that it's strange that he'd change the title of one of his stories, as he did it all the time, and sometimes editors changed his story titles as well), but considering that the story would have been well-known under the "I Sing the Body Electric" title from television. Changing from Facsimile to Fantoccini is clever wordplay twist from "fake" to "puppet".
Post a Comment