I Wasn't the Only Thing Born in the 80s

Yeah, I referred to myself as a "thing" in the blog title, but anything that exists can be considered a "thing", but that's neither here nor there... In the days of the internet it's easy to come across things from many years ago that have been long forgotten. Ever accidentally rediscover something that jarred loose memories of long ago? I did just this week and what I found made things more recent seem understandable.

For many years I've had the memory of a show I'd once watched on PBS in the 80s stuck in the back of my memory. This was mainly because the show frightened me as a child. Most things that scared me as a kid seem to reside in my memory into adulthood. I forgot the name of the show and for many years haven't been able to rediscover it, almost to the point of thinking the show could've been a random figment of my imagination. This week, I accidentally happened upon the show in-question. It was a show produced by a Canadian production company called "Read All About It!". It aired on PBS in America throughout most of the 1980s. It was basically a show about kids that hang-out in an abandoned "coach house" and solve mysteries with the help of a talking computer and a typewriter that prints dialogue and sounds like R2-D2. Here's what makes the show REALLY unique... The children would run and hide when a hanging light fixture would lower itself into the coach house because the light fixture had the ability to transport the children to another dimension where an evil galactic warlord lived. Yeah.... CRAZY! I'm not making this up. This was "Read All About It!".

Anyway, this show had really creepy music and was frightening mainly because of how unusually dark it was. So where am I trying to go with this? As an artist and filmmaker a lot of my contemporary work has been influenced by the things I saw as a child whether intentionally or unintentionally. In 2006 I made a film called "My Computer"... Some of the stylistic motifs and concepts in "My Computer" are so similar to this 80s show it's honestly scary. "My Computer" was based on a nightmare I had when our family got our first home computer. I tried to translate my "techno-fright" into the film (albeit not well). Some of the fright that I got from watching "Read All About It!" in the 80s somehow subconsciously found its way into "My Computer". As much as I don't like "My Computer" because of the handicapped script I wrote, the fact that this 80s show undoubtedly influenced it in a lot of ways makes the film seem cooler to me. Talking computers, creepy music, dark lit rooms, strange printed messages, etc... You wanna see the stark examples, watch below. One is an episode of "Read All About It!" that is in really poor quality from YouTube. The other is the theatrical trailer from "My Computer". Look for the similarities and shutter in fear!

Yeah.... creepy... I'll be honest, "Lavorsia" and the basic premise surrounding it was strongly influenced by me having watched "RoboCop", "Short Circuit", and even "Mannequin" as a child on HBO. I'd be lying if I said even the short lived sitcom "Small Wonder" didn't influence "Lavorsia"... Artists, filmmakers, appreciate your childhood! It can have a profound impact on your work!