black power

Description

The movie that introduced Gerald Scarfe to Pink Floyd. From IMDb: After a trip to Los Angeles, British animator Gerald Scarfe made this none too subtle attack on American values and society. Drawing on everything from the superficial nature of the society, the war mongering, the "me me me" greed, the make up, the diets and so on, Scarfe brings his own unique animation style into a flowing array of images which compliment the dialogue and noises that cover the soundtrack. The method is not always totally effective in producing a clear meaning but it is relentlessly engaging. Indeed by the time Mickey mouse becomes a colourful blur after hitting some weed, the audience will be left in little doubt as to why this film has not really been seen since it was first screened in the 1970's. It is very harsh but yet very fair but not un-American (lets not forget that Scarfe is this way with the UK as well) although I doubt many of the flag wavers in the US would be able to sit through this and take anything away from it. In this interview, Scarfe spoke about how the film came about: Well the BBC in London sent me to Los Angeles, to work on what they thought was a new animation system. It was something called the de joux (ju) system which is spelled dejoux. That was a system started by a Frenchman which was supposed to make animation an easier experience. When I got there I found that it wasn't a computerized system at all. It was just a system whereby between shall we say frame a and frame e, it kind of mixed through b, c, d, into e. It kind of dissolved from one picture to another. So if one drew a picture it would then dissolve through, or mix through, to the next picture. Where as in animation you have to kind of do a series of drawings in between to complete the movement. But it wasn't a very successful system in that way. But since I was in Los Angeles, I decided to make the best of it, and I did a kind of stream of consciousness drawing everything I could think of about America at that time. Like, the Statue of Liberty, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Black Power, Mickey Mouse, Coca Cola, Playboy Magazine, sort of a million images all melting one into the other. I was supposed to be there for 10 days, but I stayed for about 6 or 7 weeks. Hence the title, Long Drawn Out Trip. And it was also a kind of a trip, cause it was very much the drug era. And it was a kind of a hallucinatory trip too.