suburban wolf
Wolf in a Human Suit
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Messages
- 127
I've been getting into podcasts lately and a recent discovery has been an archive of classic Art Bell 'Coast to Coast' broadcasts.
Having only heard of these in passing it's been interesting going back to the 1990s when X-files and conspiracy rode high in the popular culture.
Which leads me to what I'd call the One with Al Bielek. As far as I can establish this was one of the first tellings of the Bielek/Philadelphia experiment story and I was honestly amazed listening to it - mostly because it was so obviously riffing on the at the time little known John Carpenter produced Philadelphia Experiment film from 1984.
I appreciate that the Philadelphia Experiment was not regarded as classic John Carpenter because of his little involvement in the finished film; originally he planned to direct was well as write the film back in 1980, as his follow up to Halloween. Instead he and the film company did Escape from New York.
The basic ship vanishes into hyperspace/the vortex, sailors jump overboard and find themselves in the future plot has been embellished by Bielek with John Von Neumann (oddly not Thomas Townsend Brown or Nikolai Tesla - the "usual suspects") being added into the story of time travelling sailors from the USS Eldridge. Even at this stage it had some of the more eccentric references to mind swapping into new bodies and familial relationships between the time travellers, but the core including the description of the ship, the equipment, the arrival in the future from 1943 almost exactly echo the 1984 film. so does the conclusion with Bielek returning to the ship to shutdown the time corridor/wormhole much as the hero of the film does.
It does make me wonder why no one called Al Bielek out about that at the time - I mean he does get completely flummoxed when a caller asks him if he'd heard of Maxwell's Equations - the founding laws of electromagnetism - which is embarrassing to say the least when you've spent a good while explain you are a physics whizz specialising in electromagnetic theory but for the most part he more or less describes a film's plot, not a popular classic but one that surely had been seen widely enough on TV in the years between it's making and Al's call to Art Bell. A film seen wider still when the Philadelphia/Montauk Mythos took off.
It's a bit like one of the modern day Ghost Hunter Reality Tv teams basically describing an encounter from Scooby-Doo or Ghostbusters; yet no-one seems to have brought this up.
Interestingly as well, Time travel involving the US Navy seemed to be in the air in Hollywood back in the late 1970s/ early 1980s.
At the same time as Carpenter was mulling over his film, another was being shot. Peter Douglas and his father Kirk were involved in the making of the Final Countdown - a film where a mysterious unexplained 'storm' takes the USS Nimitz supercarrier from a cruise off Hawaii in 1980 back in time to December 5th 1941.
Unlike the later attempt to film the Philadelphia Experiment, the Final Countdown had the full backing of the US Navy and was indeed shot on the actual USS Nimitz. No attempt is made in screenplay to explain the 'storm' as an experiment one should note.
There was also a late 1970s thriller called 'Thin Air' by Neal Burger and George Simpson. A precursor to the modern techno-thriller this involves the investigation by the Navy Investigation Service into a continuation of the Philadelphia Experiment, only the macguffin involves teleportation rather than time travel.
Having only heard of these in passing it's been interesting going back to the 1990s when X-files and conspiracy rode high in the popular culture.
Which leads me to what I'd call the One with Al Bielek. As far as I can establish this was one of the first tellings of the Bielek/Philadelphia experiment story and I was honestly amazed listening to it - mostly because it was so obviously riffing on the at the time little known John Carpenter produced Philadelphia Experiment film from 1984.
I appreciate that the Philadelphia Experiment was not regarded as classic John Carpenter because of his little involvement in the finished film; originally he planned to direct was well as write the film back in 1980, as his follow up to Halloween. Instead he and the film company did Escape from New York.
The basic ship vanishes into hyperspace/the vortex, sailors jump overboard and find themselves in the future plot has been embellished by Bielek with John Von Neumann (oddly not Thomas Townsend Brown or Nikolai Tesla - the "usual suspects") being added into the story of time travelling sailors from the USS Eldridge. Even at this stage it had some of the more eccentric references to mind swapping into new bodies and familial relationships between the time travellers, but the core including the description of the ship, the equipment, the arrival in the future from 1943 almost exactly echo the 1984 film. so does the conclusion with Bielek returning to the ship to shutdown the time corridor/wormhole much as the hero of the film does.
It does make me wonder why no one called Al Bielek out about that at the time - I mean he does get completely flummoxed when a caller asks him if he'd heard of Maxwell's Equations - the founding laws of electromagnetism - which is embarrassing to say the least when you've spent a good while explain you are a physics whizz specialising in electromagnetic theory but for the most part he more or less describes a film's plot, not a popular classic but one that surely had been seen widely enough on TV in the years between it's making and Al's call to Art Bell. A film seen wider still when the Philadelphia/Montauk Mythos took off.
It's a bit like one of the modern day Ghost Hunter Reality Tv teams basically describing an encounter from Scooby-Doo or Ghostbusters; yet no-one seems to have brought this up.
Interestingly as well, Time travel involving the US Navy seemed to be in the air in Hollywood back in the late 1970s/ early 1980s.
At the same time as Carpenter was mulling over his film, another was being shot. Peter Douglas and his father Kirk were involved in the making of the Final Countdown - a film where a mysterious unexplained 'storm' takes the USS Nimitz supercarrier from a cruise off Hawaii in 1980 back in time to December 5th 1941.
Unlike the later attempt to film the Philadelphia Experiment, the Final Countdown had the full backing of the US Navy and was indeed shot on the actual USS Nimitz. No attempt is made in screenplay to explain the 'storm' as an experiment one should note.
There was also a late 1970s thriller called 'Thin Air' by Neal Burger and George Simpson. A precursor to the modern techno-thriller this involves the investigation by the Navy Investigation Service into a continuation of the Philadelphia Experiment, only the macguffin involves teleportation rather than time travel.
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