I just received an early Christmas present.

A while ago, I was contacted by Bernard Selling, the director of the short film based on Ray Bradbury's "The Flying Machine". The film is one of many "educational" adaptations of Bradbury stories out there - and like many of its type, it has slipped out of the regular distribution channels and all but disappeared. I have never seen the film myself.

Fortunately, Bernard has a copy of his own, and is seeking ways of getting it to an audience.

When Bernard contacted me, he promised to write up the story behind the making of his film. I'm pleased to report that Bernard kept his promise: his story is my early Christmas present.

So, without further ado, here is Bernard with the story of...


The Making of "The Flying Machine"


The year is 1978. Having made a number of short, 'relationship' films for the Franciscan Communication Center in 1974 and 75, I had begun to think about doing some films of an historical or literary nature. I talked to the people at BFA International Media. We agreed to do several films. I proposed a Stephen Crane short story, "The Three Miraculous Soldiers" because it had many of the same motifs and themes as the Red Badge of Courage.

While working on the Crane short, I acquired the rights to several stories including Ray Bradbury's "The Flying Machine," and Theodore Dreiser's "Phantom Gold." The Crane story turned out pretty well, though my working relationship with BFA was somewhat strained so I decided not to make the other short films for them.

Years went by and I started teaching film production.

One day, I started thinking about doing "The Flying Machine" and contacted a friend whom I thought could probably raise the money. She said she had a dream about working with me on a film so we began to develop the Bradbury story.

I had learned a lot from my experiences with the Crane story--principally that, as a filmmaker. I had to make the best film I could and not worry too much about whether it was close or not so close to the writer's 'literary' version. Thus I decided to turn Ray's two page story into a 15 page script. Once I had written it, I got in touch with Ray who urged me to come over to his office in Century City. A welcoming and gregarious person, he and I spent several hours chatting. Her encouraged me to take the story in whatever direction I felt would work best. I handed him a copy of the script and waited for his response. He looked it over, smiled and said, "This looks excellent. You have expanded all the places I would have expanded if I had been thinking of something longer."

My friend and I raised the $18,000 I needed to make the film without much trouble. We found a nice location for the outdoor meeting of the Emperor and his assistant--UCLA's Japanese gardens. The interiors we looked at the Yamashiro Restaurant in Hollywood. For the exteriors of the Birdman landing, we choose a park setting in Malibu.

I interviewed a young man for the part of the Emperor's assistant and he seemed adequate. He mentioned that his uncle was a well-known actor, Jimmy Hong. Jimmy and I met. A friendly man with the exact face I had hoped for, his only words were, "Hire my nephew and I will do the part." So I had two actors.

In quest of the birdman, I looked at a number of actors from the Asian Pacific Theatre Company in downtown Los Angeles. I found just the person I needed.

So we had money, locations and actors, although not much money for crew for a film that had to come in at $1000/minute. I contacted an assistant camerawoman who had worked on my Crane film and she agreed to do the film as long as she got credit as Director Photography.

Last but not least, I had to find someone to construct an authentic looking flying machine. I happened to see a TV special about the Wright brothers. The authentic looking aircraft had been constructed by a fellow who lived in Long Beach, California, not far from where I lived. His name was Jack Lambie. Jack and I met and he agreed to build what we needed for a modest amount of money, more for the fun of it than anything else. When he finished it, I realized that the flying machine would look quite beautiful on film. I was a happy director.

And so we began. The initial hitch came when we heard the conversation between the Emperor and his chief Mandarin, a burly fellow who looked the part but had a substantial Brooklyn accent. We all laughed at that little hitch, cut down his part to two lines and went on.

The next difficulty came in shooting the moment when the Executioner meets up with the Emperor and the Birdman. The shooting itself went well but in looking at the dailies, the sound was a huge problem--everything was out of sync. (The camerawoman had forgotten to flip the sync switch linking the camera and the sound recorder.) I spent many a long night cutting frames out of the mag track trying to get this very important sequence in sync.

When we went out to Malibu to film, we had plenty of light and a beautiful day in which to shoot. However, the camerawoman became hesitant and wanted to shoot take after take of each setup because she was unsure of the exposure. Finally I insisted that we shoot it at f5.6 and go on. The takes all looked just fine but we ran out of time to do some of the close-ups I wanted.

The last day of shooting took place at the Yamashiro Restaurant. I was surprised to find that the scene designer and the camerawoman had done nothing when we arrived at 9:00 am. My words to them had been 'build the set early in the morning and light it." To my consternation, the camerawoman was not willing to light the set herself and insisted on bringing in a 'lighting director' which cost me a cool $300.00 extra for the day.

Finally, in the middle of the afternoon, we began to shoot the interiors. Jimmy Hong and the birdman both did a fine, quick job and we were able to get the interiors without a problem. However, at that point the Yamashiro manager told me we had to wrap up our shooting in half an hour because guests would be coming in for dinner at 5:00 pm.

I was pretty frantic: the light outside was falling fast and we had to shoot the birdman's escape from the Emperor's grasp, as well as the guards' pursuit. I set up the camera and told the camerawoman to shoot as best she could. I had the actors ready, staged the action and then shot the Emperor's speech and the birdman's escape all in twenty minutes. It turned out fine.

The light had fallen and we managed to get a nice silhouette shot of the guards hauling the birdman back to the Executioner's dungeon. We were not able to get a shot of the steep steps with flaming torches illuminating the action. Too bad. We had fire marshals standing by (at $200.00 a day).

Once the principal filming had been completed, I had to figure out how to shoot a scene of the birdman in the air, inside the 'flying machine'. At first, I put a dummy in the contraption and had a crane lift it up high into the sky. It looked fake. Next, I asked the birdman if he wanted to go up in the contraption. He begged off.

I realized I would have to do it myself.

A few days later, I asked Jack Lambie, the creator of the flying machine to come up and supervise, just to make sure the contraption would hold me 50 feet in the air. It wasn't built to hold anything but a dummy, which is what I felt like as I was hauled up to the 50 foot height.

Although Jack never made it to the shoot, we went ahead. I strapped myself into the contraption, perched on a single aluminum pipe and the crew hoisted me in the air. I flapped the wings, continually asking the cameraman if he had gotten the shot. The pipe felt like it was cutting me in half. Aww!!

At length, the crew lowered me onto the top of the VW bus from which I had been launched. The cameraman assured me we had gotten usable footage and we went home. Looking at the dailies of the afternoon's shoot, I was satisfied. It looked believable and cut into the film nicely.

Jack Lambie had flown his plane to the wrong airport and never made it to the shoot.

When I put it all together, I got a musician buddy of mine, John Braheny, to write a score. He had created the music track for an earlier film of mine, "Little Train, Little Train," and I knew him to be imaginative and reliable. He created a haunting flute-like improvisation that fit the film nicely.

“The Flying Machine” went into distribution and did reasonably well for the first year, at which time the distribution company went out of business. I approached another distributor who was willing to buy me out, enabling me to pay back the investors the principal plus a 30% profit, almost unheard of for an educational film.

Everyone who saw the film loved it, remarking that it seemed authentic, that the actors were very believable and that the theme-- progress vs. the status quo-- was a timeless theme. When I showed Ray the film, he raved about it, saying that it "resulted in a film that was every bit as good as it had looked on paper" the day we sat in his office. He went on to give me many more compliments which felt good coming from the author of this fine little story.

At that point, I felt good about my chances of making it to the next level as a filmmaker--making low budget, features or even modestly budgeted history films. I knew I could get good performances from actors and I knew how to create a fine visual look to whatever I undertook. I had learned the art of adapting stories to the film medium.

Sadly, I never made another film. During the three year period of time following the making of the films for the Franciscan Center, I had made no money in the film business and very little as a teacher. I had exhausted all my funds and had mortgaged my house to the hilt. Thus, I had to go back to teaching, more or less full time.

So much for the story behind the making of "The Flying Machine." A good time in my life, although all too brief, it seems to me, as I turn 71 years old.

Bernard Selling - Topanga, CA - December 19, 2009


Many thanks, Bernard - and Merry Christmas to everyone!


- Phil

Labels: Bernard Selling, Flying Machine

We all know that different writers have a different style to their work, and we often think we can identify the author by detecting their style in a passage of text. Some scientists in Sweden have taken this idea to a mathematical extreme, and determined that each author has a distinctive style fingerprint, which can be established by cataloguing the words the use and comparing their frequencies.

A yet bolder claim emerging from the study ("The meta book and size-dependent properties of written language") is that each time an author writes, s/he is drawing on a personal "meta-book". It sounds to me that this is another way of saying that an author has a basic repertoire, and each new work is built from that repertoire.

Most Bradbury readers will be intuitively familiar with this idea, and can certainly cite example of particular linguistic tricks and techniques that Bradbury uses over and over again.

One of the clearest reports on this new study is on the BBC News site, here.

Labels: linguistics, science, style

It's just come to my attention that Ray Bradbury's literary agent of many years, Don Congdon, has passed away at the age of 91.

Congdon, I recently discovered, was also Francois Truffaut's literary agent. It was probably through early work on the film of Fahrenheit 451 that Truffaut first encountered Congdon, and he subsequently asked Congdon to represent him on his Hitchcock interview book and other published works.

There is an obituary of Don Congdon on the New York Times website.

In a world exclusive, I am pleased to reveal that Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is to be given its first complete full-cast audio production.

The Colonial Radio Theatre already has award-winning productions of Something Wicked, Dandelion Wine and The Halloween Tree under its belt, and is now set to embark on a full-length dramatisation of the Chronicles, from a new script by Jerry Robbins.

Jerry says, "I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be able to produce this iconic work. Ray is allowing me to adapt the script for the audio production from his book as I did with The Halloween Tree, and for this I am doubly honored!"

Two of Colonial's earlier productions were audio presentations of Bradbury's own stage plays. Bradbury does already have a stage play of The Martian Chronicles. In my view, though, it is one of Bradbury's weaker adaptations - largely because Bradbury has written a very synopsised, yet highly episodic, adaptation. Bradbury has also written a number of screenplay adaptations over the years, some of which will shortly be published by Subterranean Press.

I asked Jerry what running time he envisages for his new adaptation. His answer I find quite pleasing: "I plan on adapting the entire book, so I'm not sure on the running time yet. I hope to have the script finished mid-December for Ray to read through. At that time I should have a rough idea as to the length. I don't plan on an abridgment of content by any means. If we're going to do Martian Chronicles, we're going to DO Martian Chronicles."

I hope to bring more news on this production as it proceeds, but you can also keep informed on Colonial's work on the Colonial blog.

Labels: Colonial Radio Theatre, radio, Robbins, The Martian Chronicles

I hear from Jon Eller at the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies that he finished his book Becoming Ray Bradbury: 1920-1953 in June. It came in at 200,000 words, and is now going through final cuts, down to 150,000 words, as he finalises publication with the University of Illinois Press. The book is a largely biographical influence study of Bradbury's early life and career.

Jon is already at work on the sequel, The World of Ray Bradbury: 1953-1972, and has completed the first 40,000 words of that volume to date.

From previous discussions with Jon - and from preview chapters he kindly allowed me to see - I can report that these new volumes will complement both Sam Weller's 2005 biography of Bradbury, The Bradbury Chronicles, and Eller and Touponce's Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction (2004).

As if he didn't have enough to do, Jon will be whiling away the winter months by finalising the contents for the second volume of the Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, which will cover the 1943-1944 period. The first volume is already with the publishers.

Labels: becoming ray bradbury, Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, Eller + Touponce, Weller

The artist most associated with Ray Bradbury has to be Joe Mugnaini. His designs have graced the covers of several Bradbury books - The Golden Apples of the Sun and Fahrenheit 451 to name just two. He also created the line-art images that accompany Bradbury's stories in Golden Apples and some editions of The October Country, and created memorable backdrops for many of Bradbury's plays.

But how much of Mugnaini's full body of work do we know? Not much, is my guess.

Fortunately, a new book is in preparation, which will showcase a fuller range of Mugnaini's work. Wilderness of the Mind: the art of Joseph Mugnaini is due for release in early 2010. The official website of the Mugnaini estate provides some tantalising thumbnails indicating what we might expect to find inside the book.

The book is written by Ryan Leasher, with layout and design by Jessica Forsythe and a foreword by Ray Bradbury. Diana Mugnaini-Robinson will be adding a preface. Ryan very kindly answered some questions about the book, which I gather he has been preparing as a sideline to his day job in the movie industry.


Ryan says, "We've had unrestricted access to the estate's archives and, most importantly, to Joe's journals. What we've found is nothing short of amazing."

"No previous book has come even close to showing the depth of the collaboration between Joe and Ray. We've got stunning concept work, including the very first and never-before published Fahrenheit 451 sketches. They were discovered hidden in a scrapbook in the estate archives, safely tucked away by Joe's wife Ruth some forty-five years ago and not seen since. Well, until now."

The book isn't restricted to Mugnaini's work with Bradbury, but reveals the lesser-known side of his work: "The book will include Joe's views and teachings on art. Although Joe was best known to many as an artist and illustrator, his greatest impact was as a teacher."

For the first time the beautiful Ten Views of the Moon portfolio will be reprinted in its entirety, including both Ray Bradbury's and Norman Corwin's full text. The ten-lithograph portfolio was originally intended to be produced in an edition of a hundred and fifty full sets, but the printing stone for "The April Witch"(pictured above) - arguably the best of the portfolio - broke after only eighty-five portfolios were produced.

At first, Ryan says, the challenge (and the fun) was finding new pieces of artwork: "I even ended up travelling to Japan to meet with two Japanese collectors of Joe's work. Now, though, the challenge is figuring out how to choose which of the thousands of illustrations and paintings will make the final cut for the 400-page book."

The book isn't yet completely finished, partly because of the extensive work required to make sure the reproductions are as close to the original pieces as possible, with an emphasis on colour reproduction.

Ryan's final comment is, "We've already got quite a few surprises in the book and we're working on few more...and one of them is big."

The target release date for the book is currently "early 2010", but anyone wanting to be kept informed of developments is encouraged to use the email link on the Wilderness of the Mind website. When a date and price have been fixed, it should be available to order through the Art of Fiction link on the Wilderness site.

As someone who has searched in vain through library catalogues for works by or on Mugnaini, I will very much welcome this publication. My thanks to Ryan Leasher for providing details of the work in progress.



On Saturday 24 October, it was Ray Bradbury: Painter at a gallery in Santa Monica, where one of his classic paintings went on display. The LA Times gave this preview and interview with Ray.





Finally, If you're looking for strange connections, the Marooned blog has an interesting series of connections between Bradbury and Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx. Even if you have never heard of Sixx, the insights into Bradbury works are quite good - see the first instalment, on Bradbury and fire, for instance.

Labels: art, Fahrenheit 451, music, painting, Ten View of the Moon, The April Witch

The Ray Bradbury Theatre and Film Foundation has announced the programme of events for the forthcoming Bradbury Theatre and Film Festival.

On the bill are screenings of short films from Chard Hayward (The Pedestrian) and Chris Willett (The Attic), and live performances and workshops. Below are some flyers giving fuller details (click on them to enlarge). It sounds like a great event for anyone within travelling distance of Ventura, California.



On the subject of forthcoming events, a reminder that Bradbury's hometown of Waukegan, Illinois, will be presenting the annual Ray Bradbury Storytelling Festival this coming Friday, 30th October 2009. As usual, the event is held in the historic Genesee Theatre. Details of the event can be found at the Waukegan Public Library website.

Labels: event, Fahrenheit 451, film, film festival, Storytelling Festival, The Attic, The Pedestrian, theatre