film ‘The world’s biggest student film’ CU brings ‘Bill, the Galactic Hero’ to the screen by Michael J. Casey
I
t was 1983 when British filmmaker Alex Cox turned in his first feature film to Universal Studios. That same week, Cox optioned the rights to one of his favorite science-fiction novels for a future project. The movie was Repo Man. The book was Harry Harrison’s Bill, the Galactic Hero, Harrison’s satirical response to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, a book that Cox describes as “a turgid ON THE BILL: Bill, sci-fi tale madly in the Galactic Hero world love with all things premiere, 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Friday Dec. 12, military.” Bill reportMuenzinger Auditorium edly caused Heinlein and 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 13, Alamo to never speak to Drafthouse Littleton, Harrison again and in 7301 S. Santa Fe Drive, Denver. A Q&A with 1997, Starship Troopers Alex Cox will follow the was adapted for the big Dec. 12, 7:30 p.m. screening and Dec. 13 8 screen while Bill was p.m. screening deemed an un-marketable product and gathered dust. Thirty years later, on Dec. 12, Bill, the Galactic Hero will finally make its way to the screen thanks to more than 1,100 Kickstarter backers and the students of the film studies program and Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Colorado Boulder, where Cox is a teacher. Funny how these things happen. Bill, the Galactic Hero is an anti-war, anti-authoritar-
ANTARCTICA: A YEAR ON ICE
This feature-length film reveals what it is like to live and work at the bottom of the planet, in Antarctica, for a full year. The story is not from the point of view of scientists, but of the people who spend the most time there; the everyday workers who keep the stations running in the harshest place on the planet. Filmed over 15 years by Frozen Planet photographer Anthony Powell, the film features a unique insider’s point of view, with unparalleled access and never before seen stunning footage of the deep Antarctic winters. At Boedecker — Boedecker Theater
THE BETTER ANGELS This poetic and visually stunning black-and-white period piece tells the story of Abraham Lincoln’s childhood in the harsh wilderness of Indiana and the
50 December 11, 2014
ian tale. CU theater major James Miller plays Bill, a pizza delivery boy — Cosmo’s Pizza, of course — tricked into joining the Space Troopers, a military organization, in a galactic battle against a reptilian race. Not an ideal trooper, Bill is injured in battle and loses his left arm, which is replaced with a second right arm. Bill goes AWOL, falls into a job as a garbage man, then a spy, then a war hero and finally a model-recruiting agent for the troopers. Combat transforms the naïve and fragile Bill into a drunken, demonic patchwork of two right arms, a fake leg and a couple of tusks — spoils of war from Deathwish Drang (Devon Wycoff, a sophomore film major). If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then war turns us all into
hardships that shaped him, the tragedy that marked him forever and the two women who guided him. Narrated through transcribed reminiscences of Lincoln’s cousin, it conveys a detailed sense of the time, rather than relating historical facts. At Boedecker — Boedecker Theater
BILL, THE GALACTIC HERO
See review above. 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Dec. 12, IFS at Muenzinger Auditorium. $8 general admission/$7 students.
JINGLE BELL ROCKS!
In his search for the 12 best, underappreciated Christmas songs ever recorded, director Mitchell Kezin both asks and answers the question, why, when Christmas rolls around, are we still stuck cozying up with Bing Crosby under a blanket of snow? Kezin delves into the minds of some of the world’s most legendary Christmas music fanatics and hits the road to hang with his holiday heroes including hip hop legend Joseph Rev
Frankenstein’s monster. Bill, the Galactic Hero may be a student film made on a shoestring budget, but it is a solid piece of filmmaking chock full of ambition and imagination (not bad for a feature produced for little over $104,000). Bill combines color animation, black and white photography and lots of low-fi special effects, which is where Bill draws its greatest strengths. French critic and filmmaker François Truffaut famously pointed out that it was impossible to make an anti-war movie because, “to show something is to ennoble it.” Cox and company subvert this dilemma by making combat sloppy and comical. The enemy is not 10 feet tall and deadly, the blasters are not hightech precision weapons and there is no ballet of destruction. Nothing in Bill glorifies war or combat. I doubt anyone seeing Bill will feel the need to take up a cause, head off to war and, as General George S. Patton put it, “Mak[e] the other poor dumb bastard die for his.” Cox has been touting Bill as “the world’s biggest student film” and I suspect he is correct, but I don’t have the research to back that up. Instead, I would offer that Bill, the Galactic Hero is quite possibly the world’s biggest home movie. One that will hopefully function as a jumping off point for these students and for Cox, the satisfaction of seeing a project he started 30 years ago finally come to fruition. Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
Run Simmons of RUN-D.M.C., The Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne, filmmaker John Waters, bebopper Bob Dorough, L.A. DJ and musicologist Dr. Demento and Calypso legend The Mighty Sparrow. At Boedecker — Boedecker Theater
LA CENORENTOLA: TEATRO DE LICEU
Catch Joyce Di Donato and Juan Diego Flórez in what may just be definitive performances in Rossini’s enchanting rags-to-riches rendition, entreated James Sohre in his review of Rossini’s beloved dramma giocoso La Cenerentola in Opera Today. At Boedecker — Boedecker Theater
PELICAN DREAMS
What’s it like to try to get to know a flying dinosaur? Sundance and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Judy Irving (The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill) follows a wayward California brown pelican from her “arrest” on the Golden Gate Bridge into care at a wildlife rehabilita-
tion facility, and from there explores pelicans’ nesting grounds, Pacific coast migration and survival challenges. At Boedecker — Boedecker Theater
WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD
Kat Connors is 17 years old when her perfect homemaker mother, Eve, disappears — just as Kat is discovering and relishing her newfound sexuality. Having lived for so long in a stifled, emotionally repressed household, she barely registers her mother’s absence and certainly doesn’t blame her doormat of a father, Brock, for the loss. In fact, it’s almost a relief. But as time passes, Kat begins to come to grips with how deeply Eve’s disappearance has affected her. Returning home on a break from college, she finds herself confronted with the truth about her mother’s departure, and her own denial about the events surrounding it. At Boedecker — Boedecker Theater Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
Boulder Weekly