The Drink Tank
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The Drink Tank Issue 131 That’s right, that’s a piece Besides fanzines, she published from Bill Rotsler on the cover! Jerry science fiction, Westerns, historical Kaufman and Suzle were kind romances (as Georgia York), the enough to send me left-overs from folk-music magazines Caravan and a batch of Rotslers that they got Gardyloo, and blue-eagle tags for the from Bill Mallardi. It came to work “New Lost City Ramblers” Appreciators one afternoon and when I opened (carefully labeled “NLCRA” and “We the envelope, I nearly cried. It do our part” after the blue eagle of was awesome to have 38 different NRA, the 1933 U.S. Nat’l Recovery Rotslers to play with. Now, you’d Administration). She was assistant think I’d do an entire issue using editor of Larry Shaw’s prozines Infinity them all at once, but shockingly, and Science Fiction Adventures. Her I’m holding back. I want them superbly-titled novel The Valdez Horses to last (unless anyone else has a (1967), winning the Spur Award from bunch just taking up space, which the Western Writers of America, was you could send to me and I’ll give made a 1973 John Sturges movie with ’em a good home before passing Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland. As them on in the Circle Game) in Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Ah, but the articles this time Grey Falcon (1941), three-quarters mean that you won’t be reading through her book we learn what the much of me. First is the debut of title means, and never forget. Fellow Best Fan Writer nominee and all-around good guy John Hertz The best photograph of her, by with a look at Lee Hoffman that Dean Grennell, is in Harry Warner’s was in his zine Vanamonde. Then history A Wealth of Fable, p. 65 (2nd Lee Hoffman 1932-2007 ed. 1992), which is full of her, as it there’s Frank Wu with more on by John Hertz should be. A good photo from the ’80s Guidolon! And James Bacon, one of reprinted from Vanamonde 731 by Andrew Porter is in Peter Weston’s the five best nominators a guy could Photos from FANAC.org ask for will be giving us the Kilgore Prolapse, no. 3 (Nov 06). In that Lapse Trout article that I’ll be thinking “I knew her best in the ’60s,” said she set Weston straight. She set Dick about for the rest of the summer. Carol Carr, “funny, smart, and a Eney straight in “The Truth About So you see, you don’t always sterling heart.” So before and since. Steam”, reprinted in the Chicon IV have to deal with my writing in Quandry (thus spelled) made her GoH book, half hers under the title In the pages of The Drink Tank. famous. Science Fiction Five-Yearly and Out of “Quandry”, half Pro GoH Sometimes you get lucky and I get continued to her death. Lee Hoffman Bertram Chandler’s under Up to the some REAL writers to give me the was Fan Guest of Honor at Chicon IV Sky in Ships, printed back-to-back like Good Stuff! Enjoy! (’82 World S-F Convention, Chicago). the “doubles” of Ace Books, with two covers by Illustrator GoH Kelly Freas (NESFA Press = New England S-F Ass’n: P.O. Box 809, Framingham, MA 01701, U.S.A.; <www.nesfa.org/ press>). It has her “Bluffer’s Guide to Publishing a Fanzine”, and her story from Harlan Ellison’s 1972 anthology Again, Dangerous Visions, too. “Steam” details the Fort Mudge Steam Calliope Company, which involved — I use the word carefully — Ken Bulmer, Vincent Clarke, Chuch Harris, Walt Willis, and Walt Kelly’s comic strip Pogo. Each of those names is a shining star. When she appeared most fan activity outside local clubs was in fanzines. Not only were cons far and few, fanziners realized it’s cheaper to send one’s fanzine round than one’s body; everything or nothing is feeble- minded. People who hadn’t met her in person made assumptions. They were finally shattered by evidence that, as Willis telephoned to Bob Shaw, “Lee Hoffman is a girl!” Bob Tucker was so shattered — for his version and hers, see In and Out — he put a character with her name in The Long Loud Silence (1952; his lovably notorious practice came to be known as tuckerizing), eaten by cannibals. After this she was Hoffwoman. She was a race-car inspector, an amateur archeologist, a photographer. She never won a triple crown, but My All-Time Favoutite photo of Lee Hoffman. she could have; after we established That’s Dave Kyle in the Chair (He was chairing NYCon II at the time) and Bea Retrospective Hugo Awards Mahaffey on the right arm. (Constitution of the World S- Editions” of the original “Star F Society, Section 3.13), she was Wars” trilogy, but he also nominated in ’01 (i.e. for 1950, fifty received much approbation for years after the ’51 Worldcon gave no Hugos) as Best Fanwriter and tinkering with the Han vs. Greedo Best Fanartist, in ’04 as Fanwriter scene. and Q as Fanzine. Ellison said she “Guidolon” was a good movie was the Parthenon. They poled a when we wrapped production pirogue through the Okefenokee last June. At the Conestoga Swamp hunting water moccasins with crossbows. In the s-f con costume Short Film Festival where it competition we call the Masquerade, premiered, it won an award for she wore a gown of Q covers stenciled Best Animation. It also won an on silk. STICKIER IS BETTER award never before given out OR: Much Ado About at Conestoga: Best in Show. S-F Five-Yearly came out every fifth the New Director’s Cut of November for fifty-five years. I was in “Guido” won Best Animation at a SFFY 12 (Nov 06), with a series of four “GUIDOLON THE GIANT SPACE couple other festivals, too. s-f haiku, the last on the back cover, CHICKEN” People watched it and they gosh. I did not know it would be my By Frank Wu laughed. last gift to her. May her memory be for a blessing. And yet... When is the novel done? The They didn’t laugh enough. painting? The film? Some of the animation was When is it complete and clunky. The fight scene dragged, polished enough to be released to a mortal sin of filmmaking. The the publisher, the public? It’s been said that art projects are never finished, just abandoned. Woody Allen doesn’t re-watch his old films because he always finds things he’d wished he changed. Remaking films is, of course, a minefield. George Lucas sold a lot of copies of his “Special dialog was rocky in parts, and the ending was non-existent. So this year I did the Director’s Cut, which debuted on YouTube last week, on May 30, 2007. Usually a “Director’s Cut” means that the studio or the producers interfered with the director; in this case, the director (me) interfered with the director (me). We’ve learned a lot about animation since last June. One thing: Did you ever notice that blinking brings animated characters to life? “Dora the Explorer” just stands there, not moving, but she blinks so she seems alive. Other characters can have lots of moving parts, but if they don’t blink, they seem dead. I suspect this is because Of about 145 shots in the of the studio) during the fight we want to do and feel what the film, about 73% are changed or scene. Trisuron the Giant characters do and feel. People totally new. Space Triceratops and Octuron are more like sheep than we’d Some of the changes are minor, the Giant Space Octopus jump generally like to admit, but if we like “ducking”. (Ducking around and dance. And 3.5 see a character not blinking, it is reducing the volume of seconds of Trisuron dancing makes us not blink, and that’s background music so you can really makes her come alive. hard. heard voices more clearly.) New And we finally have an So we made changes. Lots weapons pop out of the head ending. and lots of changes. of Number One (the evil head But why do through this effort? Why drag a few key people - artist Suzanne Rachel The hardest was cutting the these things. Forbes, animator Jonah Gray Receptionist scene just before (A light blinks on her desk.) and sound/music guy Dave Guidolon confronts the evil Receptionist: The studio head Fleminger - through the depths of Number One. will see you now. Do you want my madness? We hear this dialog: last rites. The operative word is Guidolon: Should I? “stickiness.” Guidolon: Hi! I’m here to see- Receptionist: I’m supposed to In his book “The Tipping -- ask. Point”, Malcolm Gladwell talks Receptionist: ---Number One. about an epidemic of an early Guidolon: How did you know? I don’t know about you, but I form the AIDS virus that hit Receptionist: I’m paid to know children in Eastern Europe in the mid-1950’s. Most of those kids survived. But then the virus returned, in modified form, in full-force, in the 1980’s. Epidemics are a lot like marketing (I bet you’ve heard the term “viral marketing”). The idea was that a few changes to “Guidolon” would be enough to make it “stickier,” more memorable, more easy to watch. Funnier, better. It seems to have worked.