Triumph of the Geeks

 Up Pixar

In this movie, now out on DVD, Pixar bring together three outsiders.

The movie opens with the Carl Fredrikson, a boy of eight who meets the girl who will become the love of his life. Ellie and Carl are made for each, Carl is shy and nervous while Ellie is exuberant and extrovert. She recognises in Carl her soul mate and they marry and grow old together. And so the story begins.

Ellie dies and Carl is left a lonely, bitter widower who regrets that he and Ellie never took a trip they’d long dreamed of, to Venezuela in the footsteps of their hero Charles Muntz. Now Carl is besieged on all sides by urban development but refuses to leave the house that contains all the memories of his earlier life. After an unfortunate accident Carl decides to go, and take his memories with him. He fastens thousands of helium balloons to the house and makes a break for it just as the men from the retirement home are about to take him.

Unbeknownst to Carl, a plump, accident prone eight year old boy called Russell has stowed away on the house. Despite Carl’s wishes they both get swept away to Venezuela. Now that he’s got there it is Carl’s wish that he position the house by Paradise Falls, where Ellie had always imagined it, and he coops Russell to help him.

Along the way they meet another outsider, a talking dog called Dug. They befriend a brilliantly coloured flightless bird called Kevin, and encounter Carl’s old hero Charles Muntz. Muntz is now the premier bad guy with a dirigible and a pack of talking dogs. They are Dug’s old pack who have shunned him. Muntz is obsessed with capturing Kevin and he believes that Carl is after the bird himself and this makes him an enemy.

Now the action starts with Kevin taken on board the airship and Russell determined to free him. Carl gets the house airborne and takes off after Russell. Muntz launches a trio of biplanes (piloted by dogs) from the dirigible and they attempt to shoot the house down. Russell outsmarts the dogs and frees Kevin and in the final battle Muntz falls to his doom leaving Russell, Carl and Dug victorious.

Listening to the words of the artists at Pixar, it’s hard not to see them as one time geeks. They were the loner kids who wrote, painted, maybe even made model aeroplanes while the non-geeks played sports and ran with the pack. They were the odd balls, the ones who didn’t join in, the ones to be pitied. These are the kids who grew up to make a fabulous, memorable piece of art, on the cutting edge of computer technology yet with its roots deep in the emotional style of Capra.

Good going geeks.

Flowers for Algernon

I was re-reading Flowers for Algernon the other day, and as I did, I recalled how the first reading of it affected me, and how it defined what I thought was special about science fiction. For me the tale is one of the all time greats, in addition it holds, I think, a useful tip for aspiring writers.

Since its first publication in 1958 it has been remade in movie, TV and theatrical form many times, and through these forms it has gained admittance to the mainstream, but it is still essentially a SF story. For me an SF story includes a fictional piece of science as an implicit part of the plot. In this case the premise is that a special surgical technique has greatly increased the intelligence of Charley Gorden. We learn nothing about the procedure beyond the fact that Charley's IQ is hugely increased. This doesn't matter. For me this model serves as a working definition for Science Fiction:  IF [insert technological breakthrough here], THEN what will humans do?

In Flowers we go with Charley as incredible changes to his intellect occur. When the original short story was written such matters as IQ and other forms of pysch. testing were considered to be preminent, defining characteristics ofhumans. Yet one of the key points of the story is, as far as Charley is concerned, that despite the changes to his intelligence an essential part of him is maintained across the arc of the narrative.

Some people give the following definition of a story: Get a character in a situation, then throw rocks at him. This is the template for Flowers. At the start Charley is a moron who is the butt of the jokes of his co-workers. At the middle he is a lonely genius who has discovered that his brilliance will soon fade. At the end he has lost everything, his love and his intellect. The only thing he has managed to hold on to is the cloudy recollection that he was once smart. And throughout his journey, even at the heights when he was hailed a genius, he still maintains a connection with, and feels ashamed for his former self,

Finally Charley losses almost everything. All Charley has left is his kinship with Algernon the white lab mouse who has made the same journey. Charley knows he has a connection with Algernon, but he no longer understands why. We might be left wondering what the whole point was. Charley has gained no insight, he can't even recall how much he actually had and lost. Yet Keyes delivers the payoff through the minor characters. After everything, when Charley returns to his old job, we discover that his old tormentors, who can recall his travails better than he can, finally show some respect for him. It's a blink and you'd miss it moment, but for me it's crucial.

When Keyes submitted the story to Galaxy the editor said he loved it but please re-write it to allow Charley to hold on to his intelligence. Keyes left the story unchanged and went to another magazine. Later, after the short story version had found success Keyes developed it into a novel. Again various publishers asked for a rewrite so that Charley could retain his gifts. Keyes eventually found a publisher who would go with the story as we find it today. I don't think anyone could doubt that Keyes was correct. Had he changed it he might have made a quicker sale but he would have created just another SF potboiler, notable only for a little physcho babble about ink blot tests. Instead he created a classic that has never been out of print, sold over five million copies and, fifty years on been retold on stage and screen over a dozen times.

Sometimes, it seems, it just pays to stick to your guns.