IGMS Issue 37 Page 10

  Except in the Desolation.

  "Did you know more scientific missions went out of here than out of any other point along the boundary?" she asks. "I wonder why that is."

  "We're close to the Interstate."

  "Oh. I suppose." We're at the surplus store then. "The study you did -- was your father in it?"

  I glance sideways at her. "It was just a school project," I say. I don't tell her I've been keeping it up for the past three years.

  Inside the surplus store, two guys are arguing and Ronnie is watching them. One wears blue-jeans and a flannel shirt, the other wears desert camouflage. Blue-jeans has a frame backpack he's trying to sell to Ronnie. "Come on, it's brand new," he says.

  Camo Dude is in his face. "Dustin, what the hell are you doing?"

  Jeans -- Dustin -- turns to Camo Dude, face red. "I said I'm not going!"

  "We made a pact, man --"

  "And I'm breaking it!" He turns back to Ronnie. "I paid two and a quarter for it last week."

  "You got robbed," says Ronnie. He likes to pick fights. It makes him a lousy salesman.

  Camo Dude grabs Dustin by the arm. "I thought you wanted to see for yourself! I thought you wanted to see if it's all a hoax. Or jump back in time and see if everything they taught us is a lie!"

  Dustin yanks his arm away. "I don't care if they lied. I don't care if all of history is a hoax. You saw that guy. You want to end up like that? Not me."

  Camo Dude is sweating, and the store is air conditioned. He tries again. "That guy? He was probably nuts to begin with."

  "Yeah, well, you're nuts to begin with, so what do you think is going to happen to you?"

  Camo Dude pulls back like he's been slapped. Then he ices over. "You want everyone to know you haven't got the balls to go through with it?"

  Dustin nails him with his baby blues. "Think of it as a gift. You're off the hook, and you can tell everybody I was the one who didn't have the balls." He turns back to Ronnie. "I'll take a hundred and a half for it."

  Ronnie says, "I don't buy used stuff."

  "Dustin, come on, man." Camo Dude is pleading now. "Don't hang me out like this."

  "A hundred and a quarter," says Dustin. "And you can keep all the stuff in it."

  "I'll give you fifty bucks," says Ronnie.

  "There's more than fifty bucks in supplies in there!"

  Ronnie shrugs and turns to Imogene. "Can I help you, ma'am?"

  "I'll help her," I say, steering Imogene over to the dried food aisle.

  She starts looking at the different packages, but I don't think she's all that interested. "Your father drove in, didn't he," she says.

  "Both times."

  "Who's the crazy guy?"

  I glance toward the front where Dustin is walking out with his backpack, Camo Dude still shouting as he follows. "Never saw him before," I say.

  She laughs. "No, not him. The guy they met. The guy who scared them."

  I shrug. "Could be anyone. They're all a little different when they come back. Some more than others."

  "Even the scientists?"

  "Who can tell?"

  She laughs again. "My husband was a scientist. An agribotanist."

  Was. I shouldn't even ask. "He know you're going?"

  "He hasn't cared in a long time." She's holding a package of tuna hotdish, just add water and heat over a campfire. "We lost a child. Our son."

  "In the Event?" I ask.

  "No, he drowned. In a swimming pool." She puts the tuna hotdish back. "I had sent him out to stay with my brother for a week, play with his cousins. I was taking a cruise with some girlfriends. He was six." She blinks rapidly, brushes at her face. "Something in my eye." Then she straightens up. "You know, I probably have enough supplies. I was really hoping for a little fresh fruit to eat in my room. I don't know what I expected to find, really, but --" She waves a hand at the display. "It's not here." She turns and starts out of the store.

  I follow her, forgetting I said I had come to see Ronnie. I don't really like Ronnie all that much, but he's still around. Not a lot of options in this town. "Wait," I say. "You said you sent him out to your brother -- out where?"

  We're outside the store now, walking past Dustin and Camo Dude, who are standing by a jeep, still arguing. She's walking fast, and it's several steps before she answers. "Albuquerque."

  That's well into the Desolation. I get cold, like maybe the sun just went behind a cloud. "You think you're going to find him."

  "It's a million to one shot, I know. But if I stay here, it's a million to zero."

  I feel like Camo Dude, and I don't know why. I don't want her to do this. "You think you can save him?" I ask. "Because you can't change anything, you know. The people who come back -- they say it's like being a ghost, when you're there. All they can do is --"

  "Watch," she says. "I know, I read the accounts."

  "You want to watch?"

  "No!" She's still walking fast. "No, I just want to see him once more. Before."

  "That's what you say now. But when you see him -- when you're there --" I try again. "You can't change anything. It's that whole Grandfather Paradox, and you can't --"

  She stops short and I almost run into her. "How do you know I can't?" she says. "How do you know I can't save him? We know the people who came back couldn't change anything, but what about the people who stayed?"

  And then, click. It all comes together for me, all the non-scientific data I wasn't really collecting, and I realize: That's why they don't come back. They go over to do something. To see someone, to change something, and either they don't find it -- or they don't come back. I grab Imogene's arm and pull her around to face me. "You won't come back," I say.

  Her face is hard at first, angry, but then it changes. Softens. Her eyes search mine and she says, "What makes you think I want to come back?"

  It hits me like a punch in the gut. She doesn't care. She doesn't care if she comes back. And it's like she just stuck a key in my chest and unlocked something deep inside me. What's the worst that could happen? I mean, really -- what's the worst? I get stuck in some other time? I'm already stuck in this time. Wherever I wind up -- whenever I wind up -- that's where I'll be. And what I do there, that's up to me. See, I don't have any agenda. I'm not locked in.

  I turn and run back to where Camo Dude is driving away, leaving Dustin on the sidewalk with his backpack. I pull out my wallet and point to the pack. "I'll give you a hundred bucks," I say. "That'll get you a bus to somewhere." It'll get me somewhen.

  Imogene is waiting for me, and I can see from her face that she doesn't get it. I realize she never actually asked me that question. Maybe it wasn't her question. Maybe it was mine. So I shoulder the backpack. "Could you use some company?" I ask.

  She blinks, but then her face relaxes. She even smiles a little. "Sure."

  I'll tell my mom I'm going to El Paso. Or Gainesville. Or South America -- just so she won't wait around for me. I'll tell her she should sell the damn motel and get on with her life, because Dad's not coming back, and that's okay. Not everyone you love has to come back.

  Maybe I'll come home someday. I'm not going to find my dad, or my grandparents, or anything like that. I guess I'm going to find me. We head back to the motel together and I feel light, like I could float out of town and into the Time Wastes. And then I laugh. Time Wastes. I'll be a Time Waster. Maybe it is funny.

  At the Picture Show: Extended Cut

  by Chris Bellamy

  * * *

  Missing pieces

  In light of the 2013 Oscar nominations, it's time for the Academy to reconsider what and how it honors the year's achievements

  It should come as no great surprise that this year's Academy Award nominations, like every year, came up wanting. And I don't mean that it overlooked this movie or that performance, overrated this or underrated that. Push personal preferences aside; I'm not here to talk about snubs.

  What I mean is, the Oscars continue to have trouble acknowledging
what cinema is right now, or what it has become. This may not be new news to anyone, but it seems every year, with the revelation of each slate of nominees around this time of year, the chasm seems more and more pronounced. As the medium has become less inherently photographic and more digital and computer-animated, the Oscars have remained stuck in place, designating categories the same way they have for years and continuing to resist the inclusion of any additions that might better reflect the state of the movies.

  If the Academy is supposed to be any kind of barometer, it should actually keep up with what movies are doing these days, and what things are worth honoring. For an industry whose business model is now largely built on computer animation in its various forms, it's odd that its largest year-end celebration of itself still doesn't know how to recognize or classify its own creations.

  To be clear: It's not the Academy's job to summarize the popular taste, or scramble to recognize every filmmaking trend at any given time. No award show can do that. But we're beyond the point where it should have to limit performances to four distinct (and limiting) categories, or photography to one category; and we're beyond the point where "live-action" and "animated" are cut-and-dried designations.

  In recent years, the debate has centered around what to do with the increasingly prominent use of performance-capture, and - more than a decade after Gollum's first appearance on screen - the answer so far has been to do nothing. And so the unprecedented work of Andy Serkis - whose mo-cap performances have not only singlehandedly carried his scenes in King Kong, The Lord of the Rings and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but transformed people's actual ideas about acting - never gets a second thought come this time of year. Not to mention, among a few other examples and countless more to come in the near future, Zoë Saldana in Avatar*.

  * Brad Pitt's Oscar-nominated role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the closest we've come to breaking this taboo, as the first hour or so of his performance was created with performance-capture - and it was some of the most creative work Pitt has ever done. But ultimately he got nominated in spite of that, not because of it. The Academy loved matinee idol Brad, and middle-aged-makeup Brad, and even digitally youthened Brad. But a fully mo-cap nomination remains out of bounds.

  There were no groundbreaking performance-capture achievements this year, but nonetheless a separate debate generated around a non-traditional performance - this time Scarlett Johansson's extraordinary voice-only role as an advanced operating system in Spike Jonze's great Her. Johansson received near-universal acclaim for the performance - which is as playful, sexy, curious, enthusiastic and sad as nearly any other from 2013 - including awards and nominations from the likes of the Austin Film Critics Association, Online Film Critics Society, Utah Film Critics Association and Chicago Film Critics Association (among others). It's arguably the best and most emotionally expressive work of her career, the character feeling so authentically human that everything Joaquin Phoenix's character feels for her comes across as fully plausible.

  And so the debate began - as it did in 1992 for Robin Williams in Aladdin, and again for Ellen DeGeneres in 2003 for Finding Nemo - about whether or not to put such voice performances on the same level as live performance. With motion-capture, I was always completely in favor; with voice roles, I've been, for better or worse, on the fence.

  But at this point, a better solution makes almost too much sense. Why not create a separate category to encompass non-traditional performances like Johansson's? It would include all motion-capture roles, as well as any voice performance - in an animated film or otherwise. Hell, you could even throw in voiceover narration if there were ever a worthy candidate, or if the Academy really wanted an excuse to give Morgan Freeman a second Oscar.

  Effects-driven spectacles and animated films are such a big and important part of the current filmmaking climate that there would be more than enough candidates to choose from. And as the years move forward and filmmakers continue to blur the line between physical and digital, the number is sure to increase.

  The Academy could use it history of VFX award as something of a precedent for this. While special effects have been honored in one form or another at the Oscars since the '30s (with the photographic and sound effects originally merged into one category), the growing prominence of visual effects-based films eventually spurred a series of changes in how their technical accomplishments were rewarded. Often, a Special Achievement Award would be given out, as in the case of Superman and Total Recall. And while the early visual effects category had limited qualifiers and only a few nominees, the category is now filled with contenders every year. I'd argue the same will be the case with a Best Non-Traditional Performance category at the Oscars. Even this year, I can certainly think of five great voice and/or mo-cap performances. Can't you?

  Other than those who feel these performances should remain in competition with live-action acting, I can't see any counterargument. Also, I present this fact without comment: The modern-day Oscars, in an era where musicals are rare and most movies rely on existing music and original scores, still include a Best Original Song category.

  The current lack of recognition speaks to the strange inability of the Academy - in a business of technological innovation - to know what the role of technology should or even could be when it comes to its most high-profile event. On a note similar to what I mentioned earlier, consider the ongoing discussion about the (presumed) dividing line between live-action and animation, especially as it pertains to the images themselves. In recent years, a few CG-heavy films have taken home the Oscar for Best Cinematography - namely Mauro Fiore for Avatar and Claudio Miranda for Life of Pi, with Gravity's Emmanuel Lubezki fully expected to snag the same honor this year.

  The great cinematographer Christopher Doyle* blasted the Life of Pi win last year, arguing that what Miranda and Ang Lee accomplished visually was not, strictly speaking, cinematography.

  * On a side note, Doyle, having shot the likes of In the Mood for Love, Chungking Express, Paranoid Park, 2046 and Ondine, among others, without any Oscar recognition, is probably warranted in feeling some antipathy toward the Academy and its decision-making process.

  Then, in late December, filmmaker Jamie Stuart penned a column arguing that the Academy should split the category in two - not unlike it once did for color and black-and-white photography - one for traditionally shot films and one for CGI-based movies. It's a great and sensible idea that will take years and years for the Academy to adopt, if it does so at all.

  I realize that, even if that were put into place, there would still be some grey area. Plenty of so-called "traditionally" shot films still rely heavily on special effects, notably The Social Network or this year's The Wolf of Wall Street. We've seen this with the "animated film" category, whose inane technicalities qualified all of the Alvin and the Chipmunks films - which were almost entirely live-action except for the CGI chipmunks themselves - as "animated," while that wasn't the case for, say, Avatar or the Star Wars prequels.

  Even so, the Academy learning to recognize the different things that are driving movies these days - and recognizing how limiting their current slate of categories is - would certainly be an improvement. Not only because we could honor the wide variety of CGI-based films in play these days, but animated films as well, which have long been overlooked for the sophistication of their composition, lighting and visual style (Rango, anyone? WALL-E?)

  Not to mention Fantastic Mr. Fox or ParaNorman, which have stop-motion animation, and are thus created with actual photography. (Then again, that fact might muddy the waters even further. Forget I said anything.)

  The Academy has too much of a well-documented history of blind spots - comedy, science-fiction, fantasy and horror being the most common casualties - to continue ignoring the ways in which modern cinema is evolving. It's past time to give performance-capture specialists, voice actors and all manner of computer animators their due.

  And finally, to cap it off, here would be my 2013 nomine
es for Best Non-Traditional Performance and Best CGI-Based Cinematography:

  BEST NON-TRADITIONAL PERFORMANCE

  Nicolas Cage, The Croods

  Benedict Cumberbatch, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

  Scarlett Johansson, Her

  Joey King, Oz the Great and Powerful

  Idina Menzel, Frozen

  (Just missing the cut: Kristen Bell, Frozen; Billy Crystal, Monsters University)

  BEST CGI-BASED CINEMATOGRAPHY

  The Croods

  Frozen

  Gravity

  Pacific Rim

  The Wind Rises

  (Just missing the cut: Elysium, Star Trek Into Darkness, This is the End)

  InterGalactic Interview With Brenda Clough

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  * * *

  Brenda Clough lives in the suburbs of Washington, although she lived in many parts of the world when she was growing up. She is mostly a novelist. Her books include The Crystal Crown (1984), The Dragon of Mishbil (1985), The Realm Beneath (1986), The Name of the Sun (1988), An Impossumble Summer (1992), How Like a God (1997), Doors of Death and Life (2000), Revise the World (2008), and Speak to Our Desires (2011). She has also published seventeen shorter works, including the novella "May Be Some Time," which was a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards in 2002.

  SCHWEITZER: So, tell me something about your background, and what you were doing before you started writing.

  CLOUGH: In a nutshell, I am a State Department brat and have lived all over the world - excellent training for writing in the genre.

  As to when I began, I cannot remember. I've always been very, very creative. I do remember when I was about 11 or 12, and my parents had a large party. It was the Mad Men era, the 1960s, and all the adults were upstairs drinking martinis, while we kids prudently stayed downstairs in the family room to watch TV. A woman came down to see us and asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. I said, "I am going to write novels." She thought this was very funny and went upstairs to tell the other adults. I still do not recall this incident at all (it was one of those things that grown-ups did that do not linger in the mind), but twenty years later I ran into this woman on the Metro. She immediately recalled this, and before the train pulled out I was able to assure her that yes, I had become a novelist.