I’m a big fan of zombie films. Or at least I was until they became so mainstream. The great thing about zombie movies was that they could be made on a shoestring. And if the filmmakers were creative, a great film could be made. But some time ago, I was visiting my niece and got the chance to watch the first couple of episodes of The Walking Dead. It was okay. But then, in the second episode, it introduced a love triangle. Ugh. The beauty of the zombie genre is that it is not complicated. I understand that television shows need these kinds of things and this is why there shouldn’t be zombie television series.

After years of putting it off, I finally got around to watching Fido. It is a zombie comedy, which is no big deal. I’m not just talking about films like Shaun of the Dead and Dead Snow. Fundamentally, all zombie movies are comedies. Zombies are silly. And Fido takes the genre exactly as seriously as it deserves.

The film revolves around the Robinson family, who have just purchased their first zombie slave. The mother, Helen, got it because all her neighbors have zombies and she feels looked down upon. But the reason they don’t have zombies is because the father, Bill, has a quite reasonable fear of zombies because he had to kill his own father who had become one when Bill was still a child. The zombies now wear collars, which eliminate their desire to eat human flesh. But the collars malfunction all the time and one instance of this is the basis of the film.

What’s most striking in the film is the art direction. The film takes place in an idyllic 1950s world that, rather than coming about after World War II, came about as a result of of the Zombie War. And so everything is decorated with clear, strong colors. It looked to me very much like Tune in Tomorrow… — also supposedly taking place in the 1950s. But the colors here are a bit more harsh and bit more primary. They aren’t going to realism exactly.

This is contrasted with the zombies who are in varying states of decomposition. It acts as a kind of explicit metaphor of the oppressed underclass that the 1950s’ affluence was based upon. Sadly, the filmmakers do not understand this. So instead of seeing these zombies for the slaves they are, it sees them as pets. Hence, the Robinson family’s name for their zombie: Fido. There is even a scene where Fido rescues the Robinson boy a la Lassie. And the boy’s name? Timmy, of course.

Thematically, I really have problems with the film. It pushes a troubling idea of slavery right out of Gone With the Wind. Fido loves his captors so much that he doesn’t even eat them when his collar malfunctions. Another character — played brilliantly by Tim Blake Nelson — turns into a servant for his zombie after she is accidentally shot in the head. This all happens in the context of a narrative where we see that zombies are self-aware. I don’t appreciate it when films open up moral questions without engaging with them.

In this regard, the film really fails in comparison to Pleasantville. The two films are very similar, except that Fido uses zombies to upset the status quo while Pleasantville uses knowledge. But Gary Ross is extremely aware of what he’s doing. In Pleasantville, he created an allegory of the changes to sexual mores and the resulting disruption of the power structure. Andrew Currie and his colleagues are not at all aware what they are doing. In Fido, they flick images on the screen like cinematic Jackson Pollocks. And they succeed as well, creating something that is stunning, engaging, but devoid of any meaning.

Fido is a silly romp, which works remarkably well. Much of it is quite funny. But I do think it is the equivalent of junk food. Not that I’m complaining. I like Doritos as much as the next guy.

Last night I watched, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. As brilliant as it is, I’ve always had a problem with it. It’s structure is a mess. The subplot about the modern world encroaching on the reality of the film doesn’t work, and is only there to make the ending seem slightly less terrible. And most gags are never really paid off. But it remains consistently funny. It is just a shame that it didn’t have an actual movie to exist inside of.

The main joke throughout the film is the tenth century Rodney Dangerfield: King Arthur can’t get no respect. These are my favorite parts of the film and it starts out with three different aspects of it. First, Arthur gets into an argument with castle guards about how coconuts might find their way to Mercia, “The coconut’s tropical!” Eventually, Arthur just “rides” off when it becomes clear that he will not be able to get the guards to focus on the central issue at hand: that he is there to see the lord of the castle. It is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

This is followed by the “Bring out your dead!” scene. This is typical of Python in the worst way. It is a funny idea: a man tries to dispose of his father (?) before he is actually dead. But it goes nowhere with the idea and the ending exhibits a kind of cruel cynicism that I find upsetting. Just the same, most people I know think it is very funny. I am similarly unimpressed with the last line — “Must be a king… He hasn’t got shit all over him.” It has always left me cold, but is beloved by most people.

The next scene is pretty much a repeat of the first scene. But while that one involved King Arthur not being able to hold the attention of scientifically oriented guards, this one involves him not being able to get his way with anachronistic leftist peasants who have formed an “anarcho-syndicalist commune.” Arthur gets lectured by a radical who repeatedly points his finger at the king while he says, “Oh, King? Very nice! And how did you get that? By exploiting the workers! By hanging onto outdated imperialist dogma, which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our social.” Then, after Arthur explains how he is king because the Lady of the Lake gave him a sword, the radical responds with the best bit of dialog in the film:

Wise words for a crazy world. Arthur fairs little better with the Black Knight. He manages to cut off all his limbs, but fails in what he wants to accomplish: getting knights to follow him to his court at Camelot. After that, Arthur finds some other knights to follow him. But God doesn’t respect them and neither do the French. And that takes us the end of the first third of the film — the first act, if we can really apply the concept to such a badly structured narrative.

And here is where I think they blow it. They introduce a modern day historian who sets up the second act by saying that the knights split up to pursue the grail individually. And then a knight on horseback rides in and kills the historian. The idea is not bad, but this is not how to deal with it. It could have worked brilliantly if the historian had been used for narration from the start and then killed at the end of the second act as the seams separating the film and reality came apart. As it is, it is just this bizarre bit along with some later ones involving the police investigation to set up the ending.

The next half hour is spent on four skits dealing with the different knights. The best of these is Lancelot at Swamp Castle, but they are all good in that particular Monty Phython… “Idiom, sir?” And then they are all back together to hang out with Tim the Enchanter, who is also rather hard to get the attention of. This leads to two funny sequences at the Cave of Caerbannog with “the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on.” And then the “old man from Scene 24” at the Bridge of Death. And then the film goes into an over-long, over-fogged Terry Gilliam scene. The (abrupt) end.

I don’t mean to pick on the film. I still think its brilliance far outshines its lack of cinematic craft. But it clearly could have been a so much more fulfilling whole. The screenplay needed to be taken by a single person and structured as something other than series of skits. To make matters work, the film has battling directors. I have no problem with Terry Jones, who I think is a fine comedic director. But Terry Gilliam is something else entirely. He would go onto greatness, but it would take him a while to figure it out. And here it is just a lot fog and annoying iconography.

So both The Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life are better films. But neither are as funny as Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That’s generally a trade-off I’m willing to make as a viewer. But last night I still laughed at Holy Grail. And I can laugh just thinking about scenes. Arthur trying to change the topic followed by silence and then the guard saying, “In order to maintain air speed velocity a swallow needs to beat its wings 43 times every second. Right?” Tim gloating after the rabbit attack, “I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no. You knew it all, didn’t you?!” Sir Galahad answering about his favorite color, “Blue. No, yel…” Comedy never gets better than Monty Python and the Holy Grail. But film does.

Radio Lab recently produced an episode called Black Box. As always, it is great. I think Radio Lab is the best thing on the radio. And this episode is about black boxes: situations where you know what comes in and you know what goes out, but you don’t know what happens inside to make the change.

The Piddingtons

The second segment is about “The Piddingtons” — a husband and wife mentalism act from Australia that was huge on BBC Radio in the 1950s. The story is told from the perspective of their grandson and his search for how they did their act.

The act was pretty much the same every time — just like every other mentalism act. Mr Piddington was on stage with an audience. He got some random bit of information from the audience. For example, an audience member picked a passage from a book. And then Mrs Piddington, who was someplace far away (in one case in an airplane), read her husband’s thoughts and revealed the passage.

This sort of act can be done with a code — and codes can be remarkably subtle. But codes are normally the first thing most people assume. So they aren’t used that much. What’s more, in one of the examples, Mr Piddington hardly speaks — certainly not enough to transmit the amount of information that Mrs Piddington reveals.

Search for the Secret

Supposedly, the grandson could not find anyone who could tell him how the trick was done. Well, that’s a magic thing. Magicians have this thing about revealing secrets. But it’s nonsense.

The most sensible thing I’ve ever read was Teller writing on an old internet newsgroup. He said that he doesn’t tell people how the tricks are done because they don’t want to know. If they did want to know, all they had to do was go to the library and get a book of magic tricks.

That is very true. The Tarbell Course in Magic was published in 1928. In terms of the techniques of magic, nothing has changed since that time. There is nothing you will see David Blaine or Criss Angel do that isn’t explained in those books.

Enter Penn Jillette

The Radio Lab crew went to Teller’s partner, the generally very annoying Penn Jillette. (He’s actually kind of charming here.) They wanted answers. That was probably a smart move. The one really good thing about Penn and Teller is that they aren’t pretentious about magic.

Jillette said something interesting about magic secrets: they are always ugly. He said that the reason tricks are hard to figure out is that people are looking for an “Aha!” moment when they should be looking for an “Ugh!” moment.

While that is generally true, it isn’t always true. There are quite beautiful tricks like the Elevator Cards that would indeed give a spectator with an “Aha!” moment.

Frank’s Magic Rule of Thumb

I have a better rule of thumb that is totally true of The Piddingtons’ act: the trick is over before the audience knows it started.

This is especially true with slight of hand. Once the audience is engaged with the trick, there is too much “heat” on your hands. That’s definitely true of the Elevator Cards above.

Despite what you may have heard, the hand is not quicker than the eye. One of my favor tricks to perform for an audience was always Daryl’s Twisted Aces. It was a refinement of an older effect, Twisting the Aces (Dai Vernon), where the magician works with a packet of four aces. One at the time, the aces are “magically” turned face up. Daryl’s innovation[1] was to cause the final ace to disappear completely from the packet and land face up in the middle of the deck that had been set aside. It blew people’s minds. Needless to say, that ace was stolen out of the packet long before the audience really understood what was happening.

The “Secret”

So how did The Piddingtons do the trick? If you want to know, Radio Lab provided an extra bit of audio explaining it, The Ugly Truth — Don’t Click This.

Of course, it isn’t news. There is a 1989 Columbo episode that explains one permutation of it in some depth, “Columbo Goes to the Guillotine.” Is it really ugly? I don’t think so. I think that the Radio Lab people are just following from Jillette’s lead.

If you want a single word explanation, the trick is a “force.” If you want a whole sentence, “Mrs Piddington is told the phrase ahead of time, and Mr Piddington forces the audience to pick that phrase.” And if you want even more, click on the link, although you really ought to listen to the episode first.

One thing that wasn’t discussed is that because mentalism acts (and to a slightly lesser degree all magic) is incredibly repetitive, performers tend to mix things up. For example, a performer might do a trick using a code early on in the act. That might even heighten the effect of later tricks that don’t use a code.

The Magic Doesn’t Matter

In the end, magic acts are exactly the same as any other kind of performance: the performer must be interesting. Every performer has his own techniques for holding the audience’s attention. Magic is actually very bad in this regard and that’s why so many successful magicians are little more than comedians or storytellers.

But The Piddingtons weren’t, nor are David Blaine or Criss Angel — which is why I have no use for the lot of them.

Update (23 October 2014 12:34 am)

I found the Columbo episode. If you want to get the full effect, watch the first act of the video — the first twenty minutes. Then you can skip to the 1:15:00 mark to see Columbo recreate the effect. At 1:22:00 Columbo shows how it is done, including a couple of interesting subtleties.

I’ll just add one thing: the blindfold of the volunteer is critical to the effect; it couldn’t be done without it. But the audience is told it is to make sure that the volunteer picks a truly random location so that there can be no collusion blah, blah, blah. That’s another important thing to remember: all magicians are con artists.

The whole episode is good. If you like Columbo, you might watch it. It was directed by Leo Penn — the father of Michael and Sean. Although I will warn you: as is true of most of the later episodes, the ending is stupid.

[1] Larry Jennings actually came up with this before Daryl, but the effect wasn’t published until after Jennings had died — decades before he first came up with it. But even still, Daryl’s version is superior with a number of impressive subtlties.