The Bad Idea Reunion

Last updated

The Bad Idea Reunion
Directed by Daniel Cockburn
Written byDaniel Cockburn
Produced byDaniel Cockburn
StarringMinna Haller
Cinematography
  • Daniel Cockburn
  • Barbara Goldstein
Edited byDaniel Cockburn
Animation byJenn Norton
Production
company
ZeroFunction Productions
Distributed by Vtape [1]
Release date
  • September 2010 (2010-09)(TIFF)
Running time
4 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

The Bad Idea Reunion is a 2010 Canadian short experimental film by video artist Daniel Cockburn, [1] in which an infant muses in an internal monologue on the future and the forms its good and bad ideas will take.

Contents

Synopsis

"It's never too early to think about your future," muses an infant (Minna Haller) in voice-over (London Angelis) in the carseat of a car in motion on a rainy night. The baby contemplates the ideas to come with growing up, good and bad. "My good ideas will manifest as shapes... pure, clean, simple geometry." The shapes - a red pyramid, a blue sphere, and a green cube - float before and past the baby's eyes. "My bad ideas will manifest as people... with straight black hair, albino skin, and bright green eyes."

Someday, when grown up, the adult child will have a final bad idea, and all the "bad idea people" will gather together at the airport to board a plane, looking as though they are there for a family reunion since they all resemble one another. The image transitions from the infant in the carseat to one of a plane on a tarmac on a day with low visibility. Aboard the plane, thinks the infant, a very old man tells the rest of the passengers in a cracked voice: I am the original bad idea. I was hear before any of you. I'm the idea to make all of you and put you on this plane. When asked where they are going to land, he tells them they are not going to land anywhere. "And if they look worried, he'll try to soothe them." The old man will say: Don't worry, it's never too late to think about your future.

On the tarmac, the plane begins to taxi in preparation for takeoff and fades into the distance.

Cast

Themes

The infant, neither named nor gendered, [note 1] is "the most pessimistic pre-verbal baby ever." [4] To the child, the ideal or good is identified with simple geometry, "pure" and "clean", while the "bad" is, as Daniel Benedict remarks, embodied by pale, bright-eyed, "creepy" or "scary" (unheimlich) people. When asked if this is how he sees the world, Daniel Cockburn said he habitually prefers the ideal to the complicated world of people, noting that no-one likes to admit feeling this way. [5] Benedict and Cockburn briefly discuss the film's themes in relation to Cockburn's lecture-performance, All The Mistakes I've Made .

Production

Commission

The Bad Idea Reunion was made for the TIFF Talent Lab. [6] The commission was for films of one to five minutes. [7]

Voice and music

London Angelis voices another anonymous child character in You Are Here , Cockburn's first feature film also released in 2010.

An electronic music beat running through the monologue serves as an overture for the song which plays as the plane fades into the fog ("My Favourite Mistakes", by Ford Pier).

Release

The Bad Idea Reunion premiered at the 35th annual Toronto International Film Festival in September 2010. [6]

Note

  1. ↑ Played by a baby girl but voiced by a boy. [2] [3]

Related Research Articles

Melanie Klein Austrian-British psychoanalyst (1882–1960)

Melanie Klein was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested that pre-verbal existential anxiety in infancy catalyzed the formation of the unconscious, resulting in the unconscious splitting of the world into good and bad idealizations. In her theory, how the child resolves that split depends on the constitution of the child and the character of nurturing the child experiences; the quality of resolution can inform the presence, absence, and/or type of distresses a person experiences later in life.

<i>Romy and Micheles High School Reunion</i> 1997 American film by David Mirkin

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion is a 1997 American comedy film directed by David Mirkin and starring Mira Sorvino, Lisa Kudrow, and Janeane Garofalo. The plot revolves around two 28-year-old girls who appear to have not achieved much success in life, and decide to invent fake careers to impress former classmates at their ten-year high school reunion. The characters are taken from the stage play Ladies Room, which also featured Kudrow.

Nigel Planer British actor, comedian and writer (born 1953)

Nigel George Planer is a British actor, comedian, musician, novelist and playwright. He played Neil in the BBC comedy The Young Ones and Ralph Filthy in Filthy Rich & Catflap. He has appeared in many West End musicals, including original casts of Evita, Chicago, We Will Rock You, Wicked, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He has also appeared in Hairspray. He won a BRIT award in 1984 and has been nominated for Olivier, TMA, WhatsOnStage and BAFTA awards.

<i>Baby Looney Tunes</i> American preschool cartoon television series

Baby Looney Tunes is an American animated television series depicting toddler versions of Looney Tunes characters. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation. The series focused on real world problems and morals that children may relate to, such as sharing, understanding emotions, and playing with others. The Looney Tunes babies first live with Granny, but starting in the fourth season, were cared for by babysitter Floyd, Granny's nephew.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benedict Cumberbatch</span> English actor (born 1976)

Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch is an English actor. Known for his work on screen and stage, he has received various accolades, including a British Academy Television Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Laurence Olivier Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. In 2014, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2015, he was appointed a CBE at Buckingham Palace for services to the performing arts and to charity.

<i>Its Alive</i> (1974 film) 1974 American horror film by Larry Cohen

It's Alive is a 1974 American horror film written, produced, and directed by Larry Cohen. It stars John P. Ryan and Sharon Farrell as a couple whose infant child turns out to be a vicious mutant. The film's cast also includes James Dixon, William Wellman Jr., Shamus Locke, Andrew Duggan, Guy Stockwell, and Michael Ansara. The baby was designed and created by special effects make-up artist Rick Baker, and the film's score was composed by Bernard Herrmann.

The Judy Monologues is a multimedia one-act play based entirely upon rare voice tapes recorded by Judy Garland in the mid-1960s for her never-written autobiography.

<i>The Fifth Estate</i> (film) 2013 thriller film by Bill Condon

The Fifth Estate is a 2013 biographical thriller film directed by Bill Condon about the news-leaking website WikiLeaks. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as its editor-in-chief and founder Julian Assange and Daniel Brühl as its former spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg. Anthony Mackie, David Thewlis, Alicia Vikander, Stanley Tucci, and Laura Linney are featured in supporting roles. The film's screenplay was written by Josh Singer based in-part on Domscheit-Berg's book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website (2011), as well as WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy (2011) by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. The film's name is a reference to people who operate in the manner of journalists outside the normal constraints imposed on the mainstream media.

Forrester Cockburn is a British Paediatrician and emeritus professor at the University of Glasgow. Cockburn is most notable for conducting research into fetal/neonatal nutrition and brain biochemistry, inherited metabolic diseases and Pediatric ethics. Cockburn was awarded the prestigious James Spence Medal in 1998.

<i>You Are Here</i> (2010 film) Film

You Are Here is a 2010 Canadian philosophical speculative fiction film written and directed by video artist Daniel Cockburn, which he also co-produced with Daniel Bekerman. Cockburn's first feature film is "hyper-inventive and categorically hard-to-describe", initially billed as a "Borgesian fantasy" or a "meta-detective story", and later as "part experimental gallery film and part philosophical sketch comedy." In You Are Here, Cockburn makes use of the techniques and concepts he had honed over the previous decade as an experimental video artist with "a narrative bent", and "works them into a complex and unique cinematic structure." The film mainly follows a woman searching for the meaning behind a series of audiovisual documents from other universes, seemingly left purposefully for her to find, some of which are shown as vignettes concerning figures such as the Lecturer and the Experimenter interspersed throughout the film. She finds so many of them that they fill a space which she calls the Archive, and herself its Archivist. In time, the Archive appears to resist her attempts at cataloguing and organizing it, and she receives a cell phone instead of the usual document, leading to a fateful encounter with others.

Daniel Cockburn

Daniel Ernest Cockburn is a Canadian performance artist, film director and video artist. Cockburn who won the Jay Scott Prize in 2010 and the European Media Art Festival's principal award in 2011 for his debut feature film You Are Here.

<i>The Argument (With Annotations)</i> 2017 experimental short film

The Argument is a 2017 Canadian-British short experimental drama film written, directed, and edited by video artist Daniel Cockburn. The short's first half attempts to deceive the audience into thinking it is a non-fictional video essay, revealing itself mid-way to be a work of fiction, the essay actually the work of the film's protagonist, an elderly professor. Submitted as Cockburn's thesis for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Film studies at York University, the film had its world premiere at the 42nd Toronto International Film Festival, and has been warmly received by critics.

<i>Gods Nightmares</i> 2019 experimental short film

God's Nightmares is a 2019 Canadian-British short experimental black comedy film created by Daniel Cockburn that "mashes together" appropriated film clips, creating a visual collage that imagines the thoughts that plague God at night, his "interior monologue," in which he muses about a recurring nightmare of being an everyman.

<i>Metronome</i> (film) 2002 experimental short film

Metronome is a 2002 Canadian short experimental film which mixes appropriated film clips and video by video artist Daniel Cockburn to express ideas about rhythm and order, the self and other minds, and the digital age. Densely philosophical, the work is acknowledged as his international "breakout hit" after several locally successful short works, winning praise from critics, a mention, and an award.

<i>WEAKEND</i> 2003 experimental short film

WEAKEND is a 2003 Canadian short experimental film created by video artist Daniel Cockburn, made through a remix of audio and video from The 6th Day, a Hollywood feature film about cloning starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Commissioned by famefame for the third biennial Tranz Tech Media Art Festival, the work was awarded the Jury prize.

<i>Nocturnal Doubling</i> 2004 experimental short film

Nocturnal Doubling is a 2004 Canadian short experimental film by video artist Daniel Cockburn based on a thought experiment in Henri Poincaré's essay The Relativity of Space.

The Impostor is a 2003 Canadian short experimental film by video artist Daniel Cockburn, one of several works commissioned for The Colin Campbell Sessions and inspired by the makings of video art pioneer Colin Campbell for the Tranz Tech festival. Cockburn's video draws formally on Campbell's style while at the same time metaphorically expresses the artist's anxiety in making the video itself.

<i>You Are In a Maze of Twisty Little Passages, All Different</i> 2009 Canadian film

You Are In a Maze of Twisty Little Passages, All Different: Films and Videos by Daniel Cockburn is a 2009 Canadian experimental film anthology consisting of a curated programme of eleven short films by video artist Daniel Cockburn.

<i>All the Mistakes Ive Made</i>

All The Mistakes I've Made is the common title of a pair of distinct performance/lecture pieces conceived and performed by Canadian video artist Daniel Cockburn.

Stupid Coalescing Becomers is a 2004 Canadian short darkly comic experimental film by video artist Daniel Cockburn about time running backwards as an act of rebellion.

References

  1. 1 2 "Daniel Cockburn". Vtape . Retrieved 15 July 2020.
  2. ↑ "London Angelis". Video Detective. Retrieved 25 July 2020.
  3. ↑ "London Angelis". IMDb . Retrieved 25 July 2020.
  4. ↑ The Right to Know: Impakt Festival, 2-6 November 2011, Utrecht (PDF). Utrecht. 2011. p. 9. Retrieved 28 July 2020.
  5. ↑ Benedict, Daniel (20 April 2012). "Daniel Cockburn: "Alle meine Fehler"". Osnabrücker Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 14 July 2020. Ich weiß, dass man die komplizierte Welt der Menschen nicht verteufeln darf. Aber es gehört wohl zu meinen Angewohnheiten, das Ideale der Menschenwelt vorzuziehen. Niemand gesteht sich so eine Haltung gern ein.
  6. 1 2 "The Bad Idea Reunion". Vimeo . Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  7. ↑ "2010/11 RBC Emerging Filmmakers Competition". Vimeo . Retrieved 15 July 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.