Melies and Pynchon

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Heikki notes:
" At that moment the European MTV                
showed a video I'd never seen, "Tonight, Tonight" by Smashing Pumpkins. A
wonderful homage to the Georges Melies film _A Trip To The Moon_. Very
funny, very romantic. Moony. Carried out with a great sense of style. Yes,
you got it right, I suddenly found a secret supply of energy inside me,
wrote the bloody page which was necessary to make the talk passable, left
the hotel, and had just enough fuel in this newly found reserve to carry
through the performance. I also noticed -- and somebody must have pointed
to this already -- that the Rocket was there in the cinema . . . right from
the start. . . . "


It *is* an inspirational film, isn't it?  I believe that a number of rock
videos have ripped it off, in part because it's easily available public
domain material.

But, just to be pedantic, I wanted to note that the "shell" is actually not
a Rocket, but is fired from a very big cannon!  (You might cross-reference
Kurt Vonnegut's story "The Big Space Fuck")

The end of the film *does* defy the law of gravity (in more ways than one),
but as Bugs Bunny observed in a similar situation, "I never studied law!"


Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)