Film history - on the radio

From Brian Sibley comes news of an old but new radio series.

Old: it's from 1999. New: it's been revised and newly updated.

Starting on Tuesday 19th January at 10.30pm GMT on BBC Radio 2, David Puttnam's Century of Cinema is Lord Puttnam's and Brian's major series to mark one hundred years of cinema. I can't believe it's ten years since this was first broadcast - it seems like yesterday.

Some of the contributors/interviewees in the original programmes are now no longer with us, so we are fortunate that their testimony was captured while they were still around. The series will, apparently, bring us right up to date with new material to cover the last ten years.

The BBC information on the programme is here, and with any luck the shows will be available on the BBC iPlayer after broadcast. (Note for non-UK listeners: iPlayer audio content is available throughout the world!)

What has this to do with Ray Bradbury? Click on the Sibley tag below to find out about Brian's Bradbury connections!

Halloween

That friend of Bradburymedia, the writer Brian Sibley, has blogged about his friend Ray Bradbury once more.

If you visit Brian's blog, you can read the true history of Bradbury's The Halloween Tree, and read Brian's review of this autumnal classic.

Ray Bradbury at 86

Today is Ray Bradbury's 86th birthday. He says he is going to live forever, so he is now one year closer to achieving that aim!

Bradbury has, on many occasions, written of time machines. Some of these are more or less literal transports, such as the device that takes Eckels and Travis back to the Jurassic for a touch of dino hunting. Others are more metaphorical. In "The Toynbee Convector" (1984), a man in an ice-cream white suit claims to have travelled to a glorious future world, and by so preaching of it causes such a world to come into existence. This man sounds very much like Ray Bradbury.

In the much earlier Dandelion Wine (1957), Douglas Spaulding and his friends sit and listen in awe of Colonel Freeleigh, an old man whose reminiscences are so vivid that they feel transported back to the American Civil War. The old man is a time machine.

In this recent interview, Bradbury is conscious that, at eighty-six, he is now such a time machine. It is remarkable to think, as you read Dandelion Wine, that the book's author (thirty-seven years old at the time it was published) is able to project himself into the characters of young Doug and old Freeleigh, is capable of simultaneously being the child and the time machine.

Birthday greetings for Ray are being gathered on his official message board. Brian Sibley offers a birthday tribute to Ray on his ex libris blog.

Bradbury audio (again)

I now have a page about the BBC Radio 4 series Fear on Four, which explains the origin of the Bradbury episode "The Next in Line", and how it came to inspire Ray's BBC Radio series Tales of the Bizarre. I hope to develop a page about the latter series in the next few weeks.

Which reminds me...

Brian Sibley, who I mentioned yesterday, has posted a delightful blog about his long friendship with Ray Bradbury. Like me, Brian first encountered Bradbury through The Golden Apples of the Sun - which is, in fact, an excellent place to start, since it contains "The Fog Horn", "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" and "A Sound of Thunder", all essential reading.

Brian's blog also links to an excellent interview he conducted with Ray in 2004.

Interviewing Ray's collaborators

Also in June (it was a busy month!), I had the honour of meeting Brian Sibley, the writer and broadcaster. Brian has been a friend of Ray Bradbury for many years, and a few years ago adapted several Bradbury stories for the BBC's Tales of the Bizarre. Brian, fresh from recording his Radio 2 series Ain't No Mickey Mouse Music, kindly agreed to be interviewed about Bradbury and the dramatisation process. The information he provided will serve as useful background for my researches into adaptation, and will also help me extend the 'Bradbury at the BBC' story beyond the limits of the materials in the BBC Archives.

Brian is also an excellent blogger: check out his blog(s) here.