Monday, July 20, 2009



Brian Eno:
Weightless
Silver Morning

"Like everybody else, I sat and watched the first moon landing and the films from the subsequent missions, but for two reasons this television coverage left me unsatisfied. First, I felt that the small screen with its shallow colors was quite inadequate to the vastness of space: it made the whole enterprise look like an inferior edition of Star Trek. Secondly, it seemed to me that the fear of boring the general public had led the editors and commentators to present the transmissions from space in an up tempo, 'newsy' manner that was unsympathetic: short shots, fast cuts and too many experts obscuring the grandeur and strangeness of the event with a patina of down-to-earth chatter....I was excited by this project. It afforded an opportunity to explore the feelings of space travel: being weightless, seeing the night-time campfires of Saharan nomads from high above the earth, looking back to a little blue planet drifting alone in space, looking out into the endless darkness beyond, and finally, stepping on to another planet."

--Brian Eno on doing the music to Al Reinert's film of the Apollo missions

12 comments:

davyh said...

Going to see this tomorrow evening - very excited.

Big B said...

Mighty jealous Davy!

Sheridan Dupre said...

That looks cool, Davy.

emmett said...

Wow - enjoy the show Davy. As it happens I just finished that Eno book - thx for the tip! - I want to read Year With Swollen Appendices now

davyh said...

Me too - devilishly hard to get hold of for an affordable price though!

emmett said...

Really? OK, whoever finds a copy first will mail it to the other. Let's do this.

davyh said...

Deal.

Mike said...

Wow. How was the show? Emmett, you know that I have a copy of that book, right? I can loan it to you and Davy as long as it comes back to me at some point.

It's ace.

Grant said...

I really loved For All Mankind.
Thanks for posting these.

ib said...

Great quote and splashdown. I still wish I had retained my G.I. Joe (Action man) Apollo 11 capsule and accessories.

This last week on UK tv has been very rewarding with its Apollo Mission coverage.

Sheridan Dupre said...

Last night TCM did a film night devoted to the moon. I got to see For All Mankind for the first time, and really enjoyed it - though some of the footage is strange enough to almost give creedence to the conspirators and conspiratresses. I was too tired to watch The Right Stuff which followed.

ib said...

A lot of that stuff I remember well from the 25th anniversary. I remember the live stuff far more dimly.

This time around, the most gripping thing I caught on the subject was a ripe expose on family life around the Cape featuring much first hand revealing testimony from the Apollo Mission wives. Just excellent.