#i'd love the real peter lorre to be here or for me to be there

[peterlorrefanpage]

If you haven't read Connie Willis's "Remake," I recommend at least checking it out.

"It's the Hollywood of the future, where movie-making has been computerized and live-action films are a thing of the past. It's a Hollywood in which Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe are starring together in a remake of 'A Star is Born,' and if you don't like the ending, you can change it with the stroke of a key."

Your post just brought that to mind, the eventual producing, if not mass-producing, of whatever we want whenever we want, no matter how egregiously fake.

Part of my own "No" is because we (collectively) cannot afford to forget that no matter how far along we get with AIs, and AIs creating AIs, fundamentally at the base & core of whatever it is we create, it was created by a human. A flawed, complex, crazy-ass human. With all of our good parts AND our bad parts. I came across a phrase long ago that said something like, "We believed in a god who was no better than the worst of men." Gives me the bad shivers, that.

And we are terrible at seeing even 20 seconds ahead, let alone 10 years ahead, with all the things we create that end up doing massive irreparable damage.

If we get the tech to generate someone's voice and film image, it wouldn't take much more to implant that tech in a robot/android form. (In fact, as I type this, I think I did read something about a robot that just happens to look like an actress - yes - ScarJo Bot)

I definitely agree that no AI can even hope to get near the flickering of intense expressiveness that is within the real Peter Lorre. It would be more like some of the more appalling caricatures and cartoons that exaggerate a physical facet (eyes, voice, corrugated brow, etc.) that is completely disconnected from who and what he was, because it's lazy and easy for the so-called creators to do.

And I fucking hate CGI using dead actors or younger versions of actors just to ret-con them into an extension of yet another remake of a plot.

As far as fooling people, well, I'm already beyond irritated at people who think the world didn't exist before they themselves burst into squalling birth upon its surface. Add that to the oddity of how people put their faith and belief in whatever comes across the screen flickering before them, and, well…we're an easy to fool species is what I'm saying. It's nothing new, it just has new methods of delivery. And it's like we're losing our ability to question things in front of us. We're becoming passive passengers in our own lives, which makes us ripe for being overtaken.

Anyway. On a tangent, I was also quite jolted by your post because just last night, I had a dream that involved AI and CGI! It was sort-of about Classic Doctor Who, wherein I was at an opulent house party (the kind where it's always summer and there's a wide flagstoned veranda beyond the open French doors painted in antique white, leading to the vast expanse of a back garden), and among the posh guests was a much younger Peter Davison running about, and Bill Hartnell looking just as crotchety as ever but at least in full Technicolor. And there was also my beloved Doctor, Tom Baker, in his own full glory of hat & curls & younger face, the one I knew best.

In the dream, I knew he was CGI just like the others, because he hasn't looked like that for ages, he didn't even look like that when they were showing the Fourth Doctor on PBS! (The show was already two Doctors on by that time.) So I knew he was Not Real.

And yet. I was drawn to him, and the more I talked with him (carefully, so carefully, having just seen him scorn one of the other female guests for being overly fangirly), the more he became more AI than CGI. More responsive, more enticing, more alluring. It gave the impression that he was becoming more "real" by the moment, that this AI could bring forth the man. But even in this halfway state where he was still a construct, I STILL wanted him, wanted him to want me.

So dangerous. Even in my damn dreams.

this month's unwanted thought: AI-generated Lorre

I want to make this clear from the start: I'm very much anti-AI when it comes to art. I'm not opposed to the development of AI technologies to say, remove pointless drudgery from our lives, but the fact that we seem so keen to mass-produce creative endeavor instead of supporting actual artists in a meaningful way is maddening to me.

With that out of the way, I can't stop thinking about intrusive "what-ifs." What if somebody used AI voice technology to generate Peter's voice? What if someone tried to recreate his film image? Would we even want that?

My first reaction is no, I absolutely don't. Something about it feels wrong. It gives me the same uncanny valley creeps as those horrid CGI commercials with long-dead actors shilling for Coke or whatever. It's not even like an impersonation because impersonations require skill and practice for performers to get right. When we laugh at impersonations, we're appreciating the skill of an actual human being. It's still something real and there's feeling behind it--and with any luck, they get paid for their efforts.

I've always loved how distinct Peter Lorre was in every way. His voice, his appearance, his mannerisms all add up to something so unique and instantly recognizable. Could an AI do that? Could it fool me, if I heard my master's voice replicated by AI? Part of me would, I admit, be impressed if it could be that convincing. It would be the ultimate test of its abilities--go ahead, fool the sad, die-hard fans into thinking the AI recording is a piece of lost media from Peter. But somehow I don't believe that it could. Peter's range of acting was so vast, so subtle and yet so expressive, that I don't think we're anywhere near replicating it. Not even by other human beings.

It's driving me nuts, though. I can't stop thinking that one day it would happen, and I don't want it to. What do you think?

[anhed-nia]

So I'm in the middle of this research project centered on Dario Argento's OPERA, for which I have required myself to watch as many screen adaptations of the Gaston Leroux novel The Phantom of the Opera as I can take. What I have determined so far is that the Phantom of the Opera is a story everyone wants to tell, but not very many people are sure of how to tell it. In fact, it's not that easy to say what it is about archetypally. You know, Wolfman stories are typically about "the beast in man" (with femininity positioned as some sort of cure for this personality split), Frankenstein stories are usually about human nature (i.e. an uncanny creature can have more humanity than vain and bigoted humans), Dracula-type vampire stories are most generally about the problems of being an outsider (queer, foreign, etc). But Phantom of the Opera is like...well, everyone likes the love story part of it, which is more or less modeled on Dracula, with a woman torn between seductive darkness and the safety of square society. But then there are all these other parts that seem to flummox people in the retelling.

I haven't read the Leroux novel YET but the first round of movies have been interesting, and also sort of perplexing. The iteration from 1925 holds up, largely due to Chaney's creation of the Phantom which remains a top tier monster. People don't often talk about the mask though! Which looks like a cross between Peter Lorre and the Devo Boogie Boy, it's disturbing and I like it.

This Phantom was born in the dungeons during a revolutionary bloodbath and is disfigured from birth, drawing on the antique idea that a mother's trauma is translated in the deformity of her children; also, compellingly, these dungeons lie fathoms beneath the opera house where the bourgeoisie are witlessly dancing on the graves of martyrs and criminals embodied in the Phantom. The ingenue Christine is an interesting figure who breaks up with her boyfriend at the beginning because she wants to give her whole self to her career; when the Phantom starts murmuring to her through the walls it's as if the spirit of opera itself has chosen her to be its avatar, which she seems to find totally rational. It's sort of cool, what other movie of this era has a likeable heroine choosing her potential for greatness over love? This is the element of the story that is the most interesting, but I'll expand on that in a minute.

The Chaney edition benefits a lot from keeping things simple. The 1943 version with Claude Raines has a little bit too much going on and the story doesn't get a lot of time to congeal between so many long opera sequences; this movie really takes the opera part of the title seriously! Actually they're the best thing about it, mostly because of Nelson Eddy who is extremely beautiful and a real opera singer, and who projects this blazing desire for Susanna Foster that is incredibly convincing. Like I'd normally say they have great chemistry, but I think it's just a lot of power radiating from him specifically.

Ahem.

Uh anyway. This movie picks up the reoccurring (but not universal) idea that the Phantom is a genteel and sophisticated composer who has just fallen on hard times, who goes mad when his latest concerto is stolen. He is disfigured while struggling with the plagiarist and installs himself under the opera house where he can haunt his former protege Christine, who is already torn between dreamy Nelson Eddy and her stuffy cop boyfriend. One of my favorite things here is that even though this film is extremely quaint and old fashioned, everybody hates cops; this Christine is less a self-determined careerist than someone who is under pressure from her artist friends who find it profoundly repulsive that she is dating a policeman. Meanwhile the Phantom is just way too gentle and sappy, which is extra disappointing because Claude Rains's Invisible Man is so fabulously chaotic and sadistic, it made me really aware of the Phantom that could have been. This one doesn't properly represent the high society vs. underworld dichotomy that Christine should be torn between. So what is this movie about? There's so many guys in it and a few different themes flapping in the breeze. Is it about love? Is it about self-actualizing through art? Is it about the cutthroat world of showbusiness? It doesn't have that much to say, ultimately, and it just seems really unmotivated. Also I don't like this mask, sue me.

The Hammer edition is even more disappointing, considering the studio's previous successes with Universal Monster remakes. Here Christine is torn between a suave opera producer, the lecherous composer who has plagiarized the Phantom, and yeah the Phantom. Too many guys, it confuses whatever the dynamic and themes are supposed to be. Michael Gough as the plagiarist is so much more evil and threatening than poor Herbert Lom's Phantom that it's hard to stay focused on the main point here. Curiously the Hammer version is rather unromantic, with the Phantom just slapping Christine around until she sings his tunes right; that is kind of refreshing in a way, although it also means that the film lacks tension, which contributes to its being surprisingly anticlimactic. The best guy in the movie is actually Thorley Walters whose character serves almost no narrative purpose at all, he just hulks around with this WTF? look on his face and it is kind of adorable. I guess I like the gross mask in this one, too.

But the Hammer version has one interesting strength, which is that Christine is singing the lead in a new opera about Joan of Arc. Just like Joan, Christine hears a disembodied voice prophesizing her ascent to power. The best thing about the Phantom lore is the idea that the woman has this latent power that can either be activated by the Phantom, or suppressed by her square boyfriend (the relationship being mutually exclusive with opera stardom in many iterations). She isn't just a love object to be possessed, she herself possesses of some kind of devastating energy that needs to be awakened and channeled--or contained and forgotten, if she decides to get married and stay home or something. This is pretty cool, and it is interestingly realized in Dario Argento's OPERA, in which (spoiler alert I guess) a killer stalks an opera singer with the aim of catalyzing her own latent psychopathy. This idea is at the center of my thesis and I'm looking forward to fleshing it out, although I'm kind of dreading all the other PHANTOMs that I have committed myself to watching. I really don't want to deal with Andrew LLoyd Webber at all, but after I get through at least the Joel Schumacher one of the those I'm going to reward myself with a rewatch of PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE which I'm going to guess right now is the best retelling of this story after the Chaney one. I'm counting on Paul Williams' music to be catchier than Webber's.

I'm whining about my own decisions, I know, but really the main hardship of this project is that now I keep getting the Vandals' punk theme song from PHANTOM OF THE MALL: ERIC'S REVENGE stuck in my head, and let me tell you that is very unwelcome. Here it is, if you've decided you're done being happy and sane:

[peterlorres21stcentury]

stupid sexy fantasies

I have the same fantasies over and over. It's like my brain refuses to think of anything normal or interesting. These things show up in my writing a lot, to the point where I worry that readers will notice how repetitive I really am.

So here's a brief look into my strange inner self, as I imagine telling all this to a kindly therapist in the image of Peter Lorre because I cannot afford one in real life.

*taking notes* Patient is clearly a deviant and a lost cause.

The following was difficult to write down because of shyness but I'm making an effort to be bolder this year:

I'm sure I mentioned this before but I have a huge fetish for bellies. So much. I don't even know why, but I've had this fascination since I was not quite three years old. At least that's when I first remember it. As time went on it went hand-in-hand with a fat/weight gain fetish. I always made up little stories to myself about hungry characters with grumbly tummies who eventually had the opportunity to eat as much as they wanted, and then they rested with a good full belly that happily gurgled away while they slept. Invariably they would eat more and get fatter because in my head, plump bellies = the sexiest thing on planet earth. I STILL find every opportunity to work these things into my fiction and I'm sure it gets old for literally everyone except me.

And I can't forget belly rubs. Bellies are a vulnerable part of us, and something about being allowed to rest on top of someone to soothe and kiss their bloated belly and listen to their food digest is deeply exciting for me. I love getting the same kind of attention, too. I want to be told how fat I am, or praised for the impressive amount of food I managed to put away (in a nice way. Like an appreciative, admiring kind of way). Also if we're cuddling/making out and things are starting to get hot, and our stomachs press together... 😍😍 It just feels amazing and it's so comforting. It represents trust. (btw if there's some long German or perhaps Yiddish vocabulary word for this precise feeling of comfort/safety/sexual lust/belly and/or food obsession in general, I'd really like to learn what it is).

If I'm in another kind of mood, I also like vore; the impossible fantasy of a person swallowing another person whole. Obviously this cannot be done by humans, but in fiction all manner of weird things are possible. The same belly stuff applies here--the predator ends up with a HUGE belly which is always exciting--but there's also that element of control in play. The predator exerts control over their helpless prey by literally consuming them. I like it when prey gets digested, because I just can't be normal about anything. I'm either a soft cuddle bug or a devouring predator and there isn't much in between. I don't know what that says about me.

ANYway, after all that, it's inevitable that I would start to combine various obsessions, so all these fantasies typically involve Peter Lorre in some way. Now that I think about it, my fetishes may have initially played into my love for Peter. See, my obsession with Peter began when I first saw "Arsenic and Old Lace." And there's a line, right after Jonathan and Dr. Einstein first show up at the Brewster home:

Jonathan: I hope there's a fatted calf awaiting the return of the prodigal.

Einstein: A fatted calf? Oh, Johnny, I'm so hungry...

I remember the exact moment when I first saw that and a few things went through my teenage brain at once: "omg, the little doctor is so pitiful and cute. OMG, he just said he was hungry?? !!!! Must feed him. C'mon, somebody feed him, he's starving. Oh I hope he gets to eat soon." I spent the rest of the scene in a state of confused excitement while hoping nobody else noticed the emotional whirlwind I was in. Ever since then, Peter was my favorite actor forever, the end.

I'm sure I would have loved him anyway even if I didn't have the aforementioned fetishes, but now I'm stuck imagining him as the subject of various tummy fantasies, too. I mean, by all accounts he loved food and sort of naturally tended to be plump. What if he enjoyed this kind of thing too? Would he like it if someone, say me in another life, admitted all this to him and gave him loving belly rubs as a form of foreplay? I dunno... but I hope he would like it.