A COSMIC VIEW ROBERT MCCALL S ADVENTURE IN SPACE

Transcription

1 TUDOR PRODUCTIONS A COSMIC VIEW ROBERT MCCALL S ADVENTURE IN SPACE Proposal for a 60-minute documentary by Thomas Halaczinsky

2 A COSMIC VIEW AN ARTIST S ADVENTURE IN SPACE Proposal for a 60- minute documentary by Thomas Halaczinsky Content A Cosmic View - The Art of Robert McCall 1 Why tell the story now 3 The Style and Substance 4 Breakdown of content 5 Original shooting style 5 A brief synopsis 6 Potential Interviewees 9 Conclusion Tudor Productions / Talent 10 Budget and Financing 11 Tudor Productions 684, Fifth Avenue Brooklyn, NY phone: infor@tudor-productions.com copyright, 2001, Tudor Productions

3 A COSMIC VIEW AN ARTIST S ADVENTURE IN SPACE The Art of Robert McCall Space is infinite and so full of fantasy and dreams that there are always fresh views and new ways of telling the story. The life of artist Robert McCall and his participation in both NASA s heyday and the glory days of science fiction is an entirely unique way of revisiting this most captivating subject. The world already knows the work of Robert McCall. From cinema fans, to stamp collectors, to self-proclaimed space nuts, his work is etched into our collective imagination. An indelible part of our culture. Although they come at it from very different angles, artists and scientists strive for the same goals: to make something out of nothing, to bring about a more perfect world, to go places yet uncharted. In short, scientists and artists are both dreamers. From Leonard da Vinci s drawings of flying machines to Star Trek s anticipation of floppy disks and palm pilots, life has always imitated art. But more than these small examples, the real purpose of technology is a disease-free world, utopic and peaceful societies, and the freedom that knowledge can bring. Art fuels these objectives and challenges people to take on the big questions in life. The work of Robert McCall is one of the best examples of this phenomenon. The Space Mural, A Cosmic view, 1975 National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC. In his own words, I have a great fascination with the technology that allows us to reveal more of the universe, and I have a great urge to know more about it and to communicate it to others... The possible is, to me, everything. McCall is a riveting personality. A person who can talk about the wonder of the universe and the magic of the cosmos and never - 1 -

4 Space Sail of the Future, Oil on Cancvas, 1960 come off as less than sincere. He talks about the spectacle of space with a youthful enthusiasm that belies the fact that he s now in his 80s. McCall s work as an official documenter during NASA s early days through the first shuttle launches gave him a front-row seat to space history. As part of an elite corps of artists, he was given unprecedented access to the people who were taking up the challenge to reach the moon. As a commercial artist working for Life and Popular Science magazines, he brought dreams of the future to an entire generation. Those paintings, in turn, attracted the notice of filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick. The director hired him to bring forth some of the images that, in turn, are embedded in our minds today. Add to this the many murals, like the one that thrills some 10 million visitors a year at the Smithsonian s National Air and Space Museum, and his wildly popular stamp series for the U.S.. Postal Service, and it becomes hard to separate our own ideas about space travel and the ideas that were shaped and put there by McCall. Telling the story of space and telling the story of Robert McCall become one and the same. Robert McCall in his Studio. The Artist at work on The Space Mural, A Cosmic View - 2 -

5 WHY TELL THIS STORY NOW HAIL COLUMBIA, 1990, oil on canvas Below: EARTH ORBIT, A DISTANT TOMORROW, 1971 acrylic on canvas The space program of the last 20 years is often accused of failing to capture the public s imagination. Those critics obviously haven t been in the bedroom of the typical 10-year-old lately, crammed as they are with replicas of space shuttles and space stations. Also, they must not have logged on the the Internet when users crashed it clamouring to get a peek at the surface of Mars through Pathfinder s eyes. And they must not read best sellers or attend the popular cinema stuffed as they are with sci-fi fare. Clearly, the current generation has no problem conjuring dreams of the future. But what s lacking is our vital links to the history of space exploration. This is where Robert McCall comes in. Perhaps no one living today spans the era of space travel like he does: He was a witness to the earliest space efforts, and he s still depicting imaginings of distant colonies and societies around remote stars. He s a true inspiration to the younger generation... those that know him and his work. It s our duty to bring figures like McCall to the public while we still can. Soon the men and women who witnessed the early days will be gone, and our generation will be lambasted by future historians if we do not record their stories while we have the chance

6 COLUMBIA s VICTORIOUS RETURN, 1981, oil on board THE STYLE AND SUBSTANCE The star of this show and the principle look will be the work of Robert McCall. But this is far from a Biography or even, strictly speaking, a profile of a single artist. The soaring starscapes and wild but breathtaking visions of cities on clouds and distant civilizations are the perfect images to illustrate the dreams that man has fostered when looking to the heavens. And because the story of Robert McCall and the story of the space program are so intertwined, we can tell this tale in a riveting new way. In short, this film will have a look all its own, while depicting man s greatest adventure. Tudor Productions has exclusive access to Robert McCall. Through him, doors to some of the most compelling personalities in space exploration and science fiction open wide. But the topic of art allows these heroes to tell their stories in a different way. Just as McCall s work touches on a fascination of the unknown and the challenge of exploring it, because they are disussing art, these conversations will focus on hopes and dreams rather than facts and figures. Speaking about McCall s vision allows the scientist to come out in the artist, and the poet to come out in the scientist. As we show McCall s early sketches, we will juxtapose footage of the missions he was - 4 -

7 predicting. As we discuss the imagery he composed for film, we will show clips from these movies. But whatever is being described, it will be the art that drives the story forward. BREAKDOWN OF CONTENT The show will contain approximately: 30 % original shooting/interviews 30 % McCall s artwork 30 % archival footage and film clips 10 % stills and graphics We also intend to make extensive use of the vast body of musical works written on space themes to bring out the soaring and searching nature of Robert McCall s murals and canvases. This canon of music includes everything from Holtz s The Planets to modern peices commissioned for NASA. ORIGINAL SHOOTING STYLE As mentioned, we will make use of contemporary film and video depicting the events that make up the story of our first efforts to unchain ourselves from our home planet. But, again, what will give this film a style its own is the frequent use of McCall s work. Elegantly executed crane and dolly shots will gracefully help to illustrate bites, fill in information, and generally remind the audience of the grandeur of the universe and our efforts to learn more about it. Depending on desirability, well-known news personality Hugh Downs has expressed an interest in participating in this project, perhaps as a host or voiceover. Downs is a dear friend of Robert McCall and a noted space enthusiast in his own right, having recently taken the post of Chairman of the National Space Society's Board of Governors. L1 SPACEPORT, 1986 acrylic on canvas - 5 -

8 MARS TRANSFER VEHICLE, 1986, oil on canvas. BRIEF SYNOPSIS something that pervades my work to this day. We open with a montage of space-related images, from the precient drawings of Leonardo da Vinica to the illustrations in Jules Verne s futuristic books, to the Georges Melies 1902 classic, A Voyage to the Moon... and on to moments from modern masterpieces like 2001: A Space Odyssey. It all combines to bring home the message that our vision of space has always been inspired and reflected by great artists. From the graceful starships of A Space Oddysey, we dissolve to the simple metal ball that changed the world, 1957 s Sputnik. As the space race begins, we find Robert McCall living and working in New York as a commercial graphic artist. We delve into the background of this man, born in the earliest days of aviation, a member of the Army Air Corps, and endowed with a gift for drawing science and techology. As he says, I was inspired in my earliest years by my telescope and that wonder and awe is As Soviet advancements mounted, and the Americans began to catch up, the demand for space-related art surged. Everyone seemed to know at the same time that the simple effects seen in Flash Gordon were a thing of the past. Space travel was now real and to feed this new-found interest, popular magazines started to churn out futuristic articles about what this new program would achieve. Those articles needed illustrations especially since they were depicting things that would not occur for decades, or perhaps not at all. In interview bites, 21 st century artists, like Michael Carroll, remind us that this was long before computer-aided design, and even before the rudimentary special effects later displayed in the 1960s on television sci-fi shows. Thus began McCall s inseparable involvement with our vision of the cosmos. As we pan over his illustrations, we learn about the impact that they had an impact no one could have predicted. They influenced future astronauts, artists, engineers, even a young filmmaker named Stanley Kubrick. We hear from several of our interviewees about how those drawings, especially a series commissioned by Life Magazine, changed their lives. As part of its charter, NASA was charged with creating a unique corps of artists to not just document space achievements, but to capture the wonder of the events that by now were moving so quickly. Surely, photographs and film were also employed, but artists were needed to convey the feeling of the time. On the strength of his magazine work, McCall was invited to join this unprecedented group. There he met nearly every astronaut to ever fly, from the earliest Mercury astronauts to most of today s shuttle crews. As we scan through scores of these drawings, bites from several astronauts, including John Glenn, help us get a feel for the intimacy between the astronauts and the NASA artists... McCall in particular was embraced, since he seemed to be just as fast and much less intrusive than photographers. With various NASA space centers and the art gallery at NASA s Washington, D.C

9 headquarters as a backdrop, we move into a deeper discussion of the NASA art program. With examples of these works on screen (and heard on audio, since the program has even expanded to include music), NASA administrator Daniel Goldin and the former director of Johnson Spaceflight Center, George W. Abbey, tell us how important this program has been to help portray the grandeur of their effort, to help bring the average person an understanding of spaceflight they could never get through photos or film. We continue with a brief history of America s achievements in space, with McCall s work serving to illustrate the story. Bites tell us how only these works of fine art have been able to capture the roar of a launch and the excitement of a splashdown... indeed McCall was there consistently for both: at Cape Canaveral and on the aircraft carriers retrieving the capsules. Finally, men were fulfilling the Kennedy challenge they were walking on the moon. Interestingly, because Neil Armstrong had the solitary still camera on the surface, most of the images we have of the first men on the moon are of Buzz Aldrin. In interview bites, Dr. Aldrin jokes with us that this is fine with him but at the same time he praises Robert McCall s ability to be truer than true to show both explorers on the surface, as depicted in his famous painting, First Men on the Moon. Even fellow artist Alan Bean compares McCall s work favorably with his own moonscapes and Bean has actually been on the moon! As the moon landings wound down, McCall continued depicting space achievements even designing the mission patches for Apollo 17 (the final mission to the moon) and the Apollo/Soyuz project, the first truly international space mission. We also show and discuss his postage stamp designs (even showing one being cancelled on the surface of the moon). With his success in creating icons of the space age, McCall soon became the clear choice when an artist was needed to decorate any building related to aviation or space exploration. We show the ever-increasing array of murals for wihich he was commisioned. These massive works can be found at Disney s EPCOT Center, the Dryden Research Center and the Johnson Spaceflight Center and have inspired hundreds of thousands of people. But his unique L-shaped mural for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, A Cosmic View, is possibly the most famous space painting in history. In elegant sweeping shots we will hear what McCall was thinking about as he single-handedly executed this 68- foot-high masterpiece. Here McCall was able to display not only his proficiency in depicting astronauts (the astronaut standing on the moon evokes the Apollo era very powerfully), but also his concept of the universe around us. As we progressed into the 1970s, that talent would become more and more important to his work. As astronomers peered deeper into the stars, painting heroic figures would take a back seat to vast canvases with new views of our galaxy and beyond. Here scientist/artists like Dr. William K. Harmann, Dr. Dan Durda and Dr. Edward Belbruno tell us why McCall s work is so inspiring to them, from both the scientific and esthetic standpoints. On the one hand, all out star-travel fantasy was experiencing a hey day (starting with 2001: A Space Odyssey and continuing with Star Wars and a slew of others in the 1980s). At the same time, the space program was moving from manned spaceflight to robotic missions like Voyager and Viking, which were much harder to portray to the public

10 Naturally, McCall played an integral part in both of these developments. In the very late 1960 s, Stanley Kubrick began work with Arthur C. Clarke on a film which would one day become the inspiration of every space film to follow, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick recognized that much of his own inspiration for the visuals in the film came from those early illustrations by Robert McCall in Popular Science and Life. Arthur C. Clarke tells us that those images so influenced Kubrick that he insisted that McCall be brought in to create the promotional materials, including 4 posters, for the film. Today, those posters are icons and they were the start of an interesting aspect of McCall s career. He would later work on such films as Star Trek: the Motion Picture and the cult classic, Disney s The Black Hole. At the same time, NASA was racking up achievements in areas where photography was extremely difficult like on the surface of Mars. Daniel Goldin tells us how these images helped bring these achievements to the average citizen, helping to educate them about some of these more esoteric missions, and in turn, inspiring even more future scientists. Also, as the 1980s approached, plans started to be made for the next round of human space exploration. McCall, in addition to a few select others, created the Marscapes dotted with future colonies which gave the public an idea of what real astronauts traveling to Mars might look like. Today s artists, who are still defining and depicting future plans, tell us more about the impact that these images made. Today, as a new generation of space telescopes are sending back images that rival the most fantastic Robert McCall imaginings, the artist continues to get inspiration from above. A montage of Hubble and Chandra telescope images follows. Even the International Space Station, which has taken center stage of the world s space agenda, but has not fully captured the imaginations of the public, is fodder for McCall. He remains a principle cheerleader and prolific presenter of images relating to the ISS. Shots of Dennis Tito on Space Station Alpha touches off a discussion about the budding space tourism industry. Naturally, McCall is again an advocate and illustrator of these ambitions plans, and we show his vision of what hotels in orbit will look like. LIGHT OF THE UNIVERSE, 1985, a series of stained glas windows for the Presbytarian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona Now in his 80s, McCall is still prolific creating quite ambitious work at that. One of his most important works was recently unveiled, a spectacular series of stained glass windows (executed in collaboration with his wife, artist Louise McCall) for a church near his adopted home in Paradise Valley, Arizona. We show some of his future plans, as well especially his sketches for a new mural for the Kansas Cosmosphere. (If schedules align, we should also have footage of him actually painting this massive work.) As a museum official tells us, when one is building a museum dedicated to space, Robert McCall is still the first artist who comes to mind. We wrap up this story at the NASA art gallery in Washington, where McCall is not the only artist represented -- but certainly the most influential one. Credits role on more of his fantastic scenes of ethereal and utopic societies in the clouds, where the dreams of tomorrow have yet to slow down for the science of today

11 Hugh Downs, Interviewee and possible narrator of the film. POTENTIAL INTERVIEWEES Daniel Goldin administrator of NASA Arthur C. Clarke author of 2001: A Space Odyssey Alan Bean Apollo 12 astronaut and space artist John Glenn first American to orbit the earth, oldest person in space Eugene Cernan Apollo 17 astronaut John Young Apollo 16 astronaut and 1 st Shuttle pilot Christopher Kraft former NASA flight director George W. Abbey former director of NASA Johnson Spaceflight Center Kevin L. Peterson director of NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Gen. John R. Dailey director of Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Ed Belbruno space scientist (developer of the Chaos Theory) and space artist Alexi Leonov the first man to walk in space and space artist Vladamir Dzhanibekov cosmonaut and artist Andrei Sokolov Russian space artist Patricia Carey chief planner of Kansas Cosmosphere Michael Carroll current space artist T. F. Rogers -- chief scientist, The Space Transportation Association Leonard Nimoy actor Tom Hanks actor/producer, space enthusiast Louise McCall wife, collaborator Hugh Downs friend of Robert McCall (possible host or voiceover) CONCLUSION What connotes wonder and awe more than the stars the very heavens above? That s the sense of majesty the viewer will take away from watching A COSMIC VIEW. This is not a film about Robert McCall. It uses the work of this important artist to get deeper into a story that is a proven attention grabber. Space and science fiction consistently attract huge interest among both young and old. And within a certain core of enthusiasts, it brings an undying allegiance and devotion. Plus, this piece has the bonus of attracting those more inclined to watch programming about art and painting. So, in addition to the adult male demographic, to which science and history programming usually address themselves, this show is open to an even larger audience. But most importantly, this film will be beautiful to look at. The sweeping shots and gorgeous representations of our fondest hopes and dreams will add up to a show that will not soon be forgotten

12 Tudor Productions Tudor Productions is a recent partnership of creative producer Thomas Halaczinsky and executive producer Dale F. Caro. Most credits are European, but since Tudor moved operations to the U.S., a list of domestic clients is steadily building. The company does everything from feature films to commercial spots but focuses on documentary work. A complete review of all productions by Tudor Productions and Thomas Halaczinsky is available at: Producer: Thomas Halaczinsky The producer on this film will be partner Thomas Halaczinsky. Thomas Halaczinsky is an accomplished producer who has more than 15 years of hands-on production experience. He has produced 5 feature films here and abroad. His most recent nonfiction television work, is a 20-minute lead segment of a Special about Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001 reaching the year it predicted, made for Zeitsprung Film and TV, and presented by ZDF and ARTE. The Emmy Award-winning Calling the Ghosts: War Crimes Against Women, made in conjunction with Bowery Productions in New York, preceeded that effort. Calling the Ghosts also won an ACE Cable Award and the Nestor Almendros Award at the International Human Rights Film Festival in New York. Another German entry, for WDR in Cologne, made the Wilhelmina modeling agency its subject: The Eroticism of Success. Writer: Ron Marans Marans most recent work was seen on the series Cafe Digital for Discovery Channel International in Latin America and Asia. His A&E Biographies on Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz earned impressive ratings, as did his show, On the Inside: Subways, which was the premiere episode of the Discovery s On the Inside series. Narrator/ Host: TV personality Hugh Downs, an expert on space and art history has expressed an interest to serve as the program s narrator and or host. Additional talent: We are currently in the process of making a decision on all other key personnel for the production of a Cosmic View

13 Budget and Financing A detailed budget is available upon request. Please contact: Tudor Productions 684 5th Avenue Brooklyn, NY phone: info@tudor-productions.com Companion Tape A companion tape with interview samples and the work of Robert McCall is also available, if you have not received a tape with this proposal, please contact us at your convenience