Is Edison Murder Charge a "Phone" Phoney?
Update at Bottom
A patent email list to which I subscribe (I often write about intellectual property) had mentioned an article that appeared in the magazine Materials Today
about the alleged murder of the real inventor of movies, Louis Le Prince, who was the first to record moving images on film. But on reading the "evidence," I was immediately suspicious that I had a complete fake in front of me. So blatant was the hoax that I could hardly believe that an editor didn't immediately start questioning.
Author Atreyee Gupta reports on research by a University of New York graduate student, Alexis Bedford, who supposedly claims to have found evidence in Edison's own handwriting that he at least had knowledge of LePrince's murder:
As Bedford relates it, he was turning over some papers on Thomas Edison's work with lighting methods when he stumbled across a dilapidated leatherbound book. The book would turn out to be one of many notebooks in which Edison was fond of jotting down ideas and test data. "Leafing through it," explained Bedford, "I merely thought I'd find perhaps some interesting and as yet unknown processes that Edison had tried in the laboratory. I never thought I would stumble upon this!" He had found a small entry dated September 20, 1890 by Edison's own hand which read, "Eric called me today from Dijon. It has been done. Prince is no more. This is good news, but I flinched when he told me. Murder is not my thing. I'm an inventor and my inventions for moving images can now move forward."
Supposedly Bedford was granted permission to get the document authenticated by historian Robert E. Myre at New York University, who eventually said that it was an authentic entry in Edison's own hand.
But this startling story could well be a fake. Look at the language "Eric called me today from Dijon." In 1890? The first transatlantic telephone call happened in 1918. In the parlance of the time, he might have been "cabled" or someone might have "telegraphed," but not called. Next: "Murder is not my thing." My thing? How 1960s/1970s can you get? Searching at nyu.org, I found a David Myre and a Greg Myre, but not a Robert E. I didn't find a listing for an Alexis Bedford, either.
I've got an email in to the magazine's editor and assistant editor and am interested to see if this item even ran in the publication, or whether the entire thing was faked from first to last. If by some chance it is real, I'll see if they can put me in touch with the author. But the longer I look at this, the farther I feel my leg being stretched.
Updated: 16-6-08, 1:07 pm EST
I finally reached Katerina Busuttil, assistant editor at Materials Today. Apparently the magazine had run a scientific writing contest. Here is what she said about this, the winning entry:
We cannot confirm it truth or false. But we thought it was a good piece of writing and we chose it as the winner. It was just a good piece of writing, which is why it won the competition.
Although this is a peer-reviewed journal, because they treated the piece as pure opinion, they did not investigate its veracity.
Let's recap on the truth issue (which took one reading and a few checks on the web, plus some added telephone calls for additional checking):
- The first transatlantic telephone call happened 1918. This incident supposedly happened in 1890 and referred to a phonecall between France and the US.
- At the time, people would have referred to being cabled or telegraphed, not called.
- The research supposedly happened at the New York Library - presumably the New York Public Library. Yet the archives of the Edison National Historic Site - all 5 million pages - rest at Rutgers in New Jersey. According to the NYPL's web site, there are 64 collections that have a mention of "Edison," but none are collections of his papers
- Only an idiot would have written in his journal about his involvment in a murder conspiracy. Edison was no idiot.
- I've found no evidence of a Charlene Edmonds employed at the New York Public Library.
- There is no "University of New York," although New York University and State University of New York (SUNY) both exist.
- There is no Robert E. Myre employed at New York University, according to someone in the administration who looked up the informaiton. Because of legal restrictions, the person could not say whether an Alexis Bedford was enrolled as a graduate student studying chemistry and photography.
- I went to the suny.edu web site, checked online for the name Myre, and found no search results. Checking on Google, I looked for SUNY combined with either "Robert E. Myre" or "Robert Myre". The one match I got was for someone who graduated in 1962 and was in Sigma Phi Epsilon.
- The magazine cannot pass on the author's contact information, though said they would forward an email seeking to reach her.
In short, this seems like a completely fabricated story with no more relation to the truth than a goat has to a guppy: any connection would be purely accidental.
Labels: film, movies, technology
Someone Writes the Secret History of Star Wars
Now here's something intriguing for anyone who grew up techie. Someone has used something like 400 secondary sources to create a free e-book called
The Secret History of Star Wars. It covers 40 years and attempts to answer such questions as:
If you're a Star Wars fan, this would seem to be somethingyou couldn't pass up - trivia that is free.
Labels: e-books, movies, Star Wars
A Screenwriter and Happiness
Cory Turner from NPR went to film school, met the girl of his dreams, wrote a script, found out that it was going to be produced but almost lost the girl.
His commentary is almost like a mini romantic comedy. It probably wasn't so neat and tidy in real life, but just think of the movie it might make.
Labels: movies, screenwriting, scripts, writers
Unhappy Endings
Newsweek has an
interesting piece on movie endings, and how they're often predictable, yet at the same time unsatisfactory. When I think of great movie endings, what comes to mind are such films as Casablanca and Chinatown, with great last lines; the surprise ending of The Sting; or even that last frozen frame in Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. But the author came up with a completely different list, many of which I could hardly oppose (the final apocalypse of Doctor Strangelove, or that last scare in Carrie), and a good number I had never seen.
That got me wondering how universal a good ending is, or whether much of its power depends on the person seeing it. When is something cliche and when a nod to a previous influence? And what if you may see the imitator and not original? Should that be discouraged?
I've found that endings are often tougher to write than beginnings, which is saying a lot, as I find an opening line to be genuinely painful to find at times.. To draw a conclusion, tie up the lose ends, and allow the reader to have something to think about is difficult. Like right now.
Labels: movies, writing
Laughs and Death
I started watching the DVD of Death at a Funeral, and, literally, had to stop it on the the fourth line to save the movie for other members of my family as well. A hearse pulls up to an estate in England. Four formally-dressed men come out and bring a casket from the back as someone, obviously a relative has been standing. They all go in. One of the men asks, "Would you..." He addresses the gentleman who had been waiting for them, and means would you like to view the body. The man nods. The first one opens the casket and the other looks down for a few seconds. I'm thinking, "If this were me, I'd have it be the wrong body." But it's taking a long time, and then he looks up and says, "That's not my father." The head of the group from the funeral hall mutters, "Shit, I took the wrong one." The four race back out to the hearse, return the casket to the back, and tear off. It's hard to come up with a comic line that is something you cannot anticipate, particularly when the viewer knows the movie is a comedy and what weirder thing to have in British humor than the wrong body. But to pull that off in such a disarming way that you figure the screenwriter and director are going to play things straight, at least that far, is impressive.
Labels: comedy, movies, writing
Deconstructing Google's Choking on Anti-Sicko Campaign Invitation
Yesterday I apparently joined many other bloggers in examining a blog entry from "Google's Health Advertising Team." It seems that the collective heat was a bit much for Google management, which had the blogger
fall on her sword, saying that the opinion was hers and not Google's. Well, at least that's the simple explanation. Let's do some deconstruction:
Well, I've learned a few things since I posted on Friday. For one thing, even though this is a new blog, we have readers! That's a good thing.
No, you had one person post a note about the entry in a spot or two that get tremendous traffic and activity.
Not so good is that some readers thought the opinion I expressed about the movie Sicko was actually Google's opinion. It's easy to understand why it might have seemed that way, because after all, this is a corporate blog. So that was my mistake -- I understand why it caused some confusion.
A nice try, but corporations don't work this way. This wasn't one person's sole idea. At best, it was representative of an atmosphere in corporate marketing. Of course the company wants to make money - that's why it exists. And if you're in the business of selling ad space, one type of logical customer is a company in an industry taking a beating of bad publicity.
But the more important point, since I doubt that too many people care about my personal opinion, is that advertising is an effective medium for handling challenges that a company or industry might have.
In other words, her previous entry was correct in the first case. If healthcare is getting slammed, it can buy ads and pretend that the issues the movie raises don't exist.
You could even argue that it's especially appropriate for a public policy issue like healthcare.
Because they get really affected by public opinion and they've got gobs of money - and there is that movie that's out. Maybe you've heard of it.
Whether the healthcare industry wants to rebut charges in Mr. Moore's movie, or whether Mr. Moore wants to challenge the healthcare industry,...
Google is happy to sell ads to anyone.
...advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue.
If you can afford it - like healthcare.
That is Google's opinion, and it's unrelated to whether we support, oppose or (more likely) don't have an official position on an issue.
Because we want to take whatever money comes out way, unfettered by personal opinion.
That's the real point I was trying to make,...
That is, we want to sell you an ad.
...which was less clear because I offered my personal criticism of the movie.
And if I hadn't, you still would have known what I meant, but no one could have pointed out that our main principle is that contained in our bank accounts. Because if I had really been that out of line with company policy, my backside would be leaving divots from here to San Diego.
I think we all got the point the first time around.
Labels: ads, evil, Google, Michael Moore, movies, Sicko
Google Ready to Help Corporations Battle Negative Press
Thanks to a
Slashdot.org reader for noticing
this blog entry from "Google's Health Advertising Team." It discusses the Michael Moore movie
Sicko as an entry into discussing how to use Google to counter the force of negative public attention:
We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company’s assets while helping users find the information they seek.
In other words, we can help you try to keep people from noticing what it is that you're doing wrong. Personally I'd say that for a company to try to pretend that it's not doing something wrong is an evil act. Google's corporate
code of conduct says that its "informal corporate motto is 'Don't be evil.'" But they never said anything about advertising it.
Labels: ads, evil, Google, Michael Moore, movies, Sicko
Ultimate Price Important in Hollywood Scripts
It makes sense that Hollywood considers the potential cost of a movie before buying a script. But I still found this LA Times
article interesting, particularly as the columnist got his hand on scripts without studios knowing.
Labels: Hollywood, movies, scripts, studios
Critics and a Cannes-Do Attitude
I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR last night. The program's critic-at-large, John Powers, had just returned from the Cannes Film Festival and had a conversation with the
show's TV critic David
Bianculli. It was easy to tell that the pair were having a high time, critics getting to talk about being critics in the context of what was supposed to be a report on the festival. Here's something Powers said early on:
I spend every year probably like most people spend at the Oscars, like, I can't believe that thing won, that normally I just can't believe that a jury of nine people can be so wrong. This year, strangely enough, the jury chose almost everything that I liked, but not just that I liked, but almost everybody else liked. It's really an odd thing, because normally there are all these weird agendas going on, you know, where something might be the best film, but in fact the jury has a lot of people from Europe, and they want to make sure Europe wins, so that, in fact, the third or fourth best film wins because it's from Europe.
He went on to admit a story that he admitted showed something about film critics. He said that they were "faintly condescending" because there would four actresses on the jury panel, and the attitude of the critics was, "Actors and actresses, like, they can't be trusted; their judgment is terrible." Then, amazingly enough, their choices were astoundingly good. Not that you'd expect people who actually
do something for a living might know more and have better taste than those who professionally pass judgment although they may know little to nothing about the actual process.
All this is the backdrop for what I found really amusing. These educated, somewhat condescending people were both pronouncing the name of the town as
KAHN. But the French pronunciation is actually much closer to the English word CAN. So much for sophistication.
Labels: Bianculli, Cannes, critics, films, Fresh Air, movies, NPR, Powers
