T. M. Moore's Blog Page

I Hit The Ground Running This Year. . .

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Each video I am presenting is a musical slideshow about my books in the Children of The Dragon series. I wish to credit this new and creative advertising medium idea to the efforts of Mike Jittlov, a pioneer in stop-motion animation who began his career in 1973 with a little short film called Animato. This 16mm film was received with enormous appreciation by those in the science fiction and fantasy community, and Jittlov shopped it around to several major SF conventions before embarking on the project he called The Wizard of Speed and Time, which was presented on Walt Disney's "Major Effects" show in 1979. (A film which struck me especially since he starts out dusting the floor in a museum and actually seats himself in the famous Time Machine which everyone has seen)*. Later, Jittlov obtained the funding for the motion picture of the same title, which debuted in Los Angeles in 1980, partly from donations from banks and friends and partly from holding a garage sale.

*The Time Machine was on loan from Bob Burns, who restored it to its wonderful condition after it languished in various other people's garages and storage facilities. Sometimes people have no respect for history.

I remember attending both the showing at Westercon and later at the Laemmle Theater in Westwood (near UCLA). My position in the long ticket line was "42" (another honored SF term). The audience packed the room to standing-room-only. Later, I understood from others that Jittlov's film had a short shelf life in Hollywood due to union problems and other difficulties which prevented it from seeing a full run. This in its way had a profound effect on my desire to see my projects succeed without the intervention of so-called "experts". Just think that if George Lucas or Steven Spielberg were old enough or successful enough at the time to help Mike out things would have been quite different. George Lucas is another independent filmmaker who has seen the same treatment, so he would have empathized. As it is, Mike has moved on to new digs in Sweden and I hope he can come back to try again. He may become the next Ingmar Bergman over there.

But I digress. My efforts are much cruder than his but I continue to find projects to work on in this new medium because sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words to a writer. I am also thinking of making short animated films based on my books or a related subject. My next one may be about the history and legend of dragons. Who knows? - T.M. Moore