Still, few lost tape hauls evince the vastness and intrigue of late English producer Joe Meek's Tea Chest Tapes: 67 crates containing nearly 2000 reels of previously unheard tracks by 1960s acts including David Bowie's first band The Konrads, Tom Jones, Ray Davies, Billy Fury, Gene Vincent, Georgie Fame, youthful singer-songwriter Mark Feld (later to become glam rock idol Marc Bolan), Rod Stewart, Jimmy Page, John Leyton, The Tornados (whose 1962 global smash hit Telstar, written and produced by Meek, summoned the space age), and an early incarnation of British rockers Status Quo, to name a few. Following Meek's 1967 suicide, the Tea Chest Tapes were bought and carefully stored by young musician/businessman Cliff Cooper (whose band The Millionaires had been produced by Meek); a few months ago, the tapes were acquired by much-loved independent label Cherry Red Records.
Pixar, at the time, did not continuously test their backups. This is where the trouble started, because the backups were stored on a tape drive and as the files hit 4 gigabytes in size, the maximum size of the file was met. The error log, which would have told the system administrators about the full drive, was also located on the full volume, and was zero bytes in size.
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Susman, the Supervising Technical Director on Toy Story 2 (pictured below), had given birth to her son Eli shortly before, and had been working from home. This meant that she had a Silicon Graphics workstation at her house. It was either an Indigo 2 or an Octane, pictured right, and it was loaded up with a full copy of the movie.
In order for her to work on the movie while out, they had plugged the machine up to the local network and copied the whole file tree over. Then she would receive incremental updates over her ISDN internet connection. For those not in the know, that was like two 56kbps modems duct-taped together (welcome to 1998).
The last update that her machine had gotten could have been as old as a couple of weeks, but at this point, the Pixar team had an incomplete backup and a corrupt tree full of files, and they needed anything they could get their hands on to fix the problem. This was the difference between rebuilding every missing file from scratch and, well, shipping the movie on time.
Bill Murray's acting in Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" is surely one of the most exquisitely controlled performances in recent movies. Without it, the film could be unwatchable. With it, I can't take my eyes away. Not for a second, not for a frame, does his focus relax, and yet it seems effortless. It's sometimes said of an actor that we can't see him acting. I can't even see him not acting. He seems to be existing, merely existing, in the situation created for him by Sofia Coppola.
One of the strengths of Coppola's screenplay is that her people and everything they do are believable. Unlike the characters in most movies, they don't quickly sense they belong together, and they don't immediately want to be together. Coppola keeps them apart for a noticeably long time. They don't know they're the Girl and the Boy. They don't have a Meet Cute. We grow to know them separately.
I can't tell you how many people have told me that just don't get "Lost in Translation." They want to know what it's about. They complain "nothing happens." They've been trained by movies that tell them where to look and what to feel, in stories that have a beginning, a middle and an end. "Lost in Translation" offers an experience in the exercise of empathy. The characters empathize with each other (that's what it's about), and we can empathize with them going through that process. It's not a question of reading our own emotions into Murray's blank slate. The slate isn't blank. It's on hold. He doesn't choose to wear his heart on his sleeve for Charlotte, and he doesn't choose to make a move. But he is very lonely and not without sympathy for her. She would plausibly have sex with him, casually, to be "nice," and because she's mad at her husband and it might be fun. But she doesn't know as he does that if you cheat it shouldn't be with someone it would make a difference to.
What is lost in translation? John understands nothing of what Charlotte says or feels, nor does he understand how he's behaving. (Ribisi's acting in the scene where he rushes out saying he loves her is remorselessly exact). Bob's wife and assistant don't understand how desperately indifferent he is to the carpet samples. And so on. What does get translated, finally, is what Bob and Charlotte are really thinking. The whole movie is about that act of translation taking place.
The tapes were so old, Mr Lowry said, they were placed in a chemical bath so they could be digitised. Mr Lowry said he had already fielded interest from Hollywood actors by word-of-mouth alone. "People see this as their last opportunity to act in a movie with Orson Welles," he said.
John Erick Dowdle is best known for his horror movies, especially in the found footage sub-genre. His best-known movie is 2014's As Above, So Below, but he's also been recognized for Devil (2010) and Quarantine (2018). While his filmography is not as lengthy as other directors in the genre, Dowdle's movies have made a lasting impact on the use of found footage horror as it has continued to develop from its roots in The Blair Witch Project. Found footage movies are some of the most captivating stories due to their ability to hint at some form of truth behind them and add elements of realism. Recently, Michael Goi's Megan Is Missing went viral on TikTok and, along with it, so have The Poughkeepsie Tapes. Both found footage movies offer disturbing depictions of kidnapping, assault on women and children, as well as murder.
While marketing for found footage movies informs audiences that what they are about to witness is almost entirely real, The Poughkeepsie Tapes is all fabricated with only a few shreds of truth utilized by Dowdle to create one of horror's most terrifying killers. The movie follows a team of investigators as they discuss the videotape recordings the killer kept as a keepsake; they served as a reminder of each murder. The investigation uncovered 800 videotapes hidden in the basement of a house he rented. As the detectives dive into the unknown killer's mind, it leads them down a path more disturbing than they could have ever predicted. Despite the claim that The Poughkeepsie Tapes was based on a real-life event, it wasn't. Instead, it was influenced entirely by past serial killers and their crimes as well as the exploitative contents of snuff films. Snuff films commonly depict obscene content, normally acts of real homicide. Cannibal Holocaust is considered a fictional snuff film based on its extensive use of bodily torture, murder, and cannibalism.
There is heavy debate in the film industry on which movies are depicting actual murders and acts of self-mutilation versus those that are staged. Actual filmed murders and executions do exist, but they weren't made with the intent to entertain an audience. The only real-life murders and criminal acts that The Poughkeepsie Tapes can be tied to are Kendall Francois's ten murders, which took place from 1996 to 1998. According to local newspapers, Francois killed ten sex workers. Despite the influence his crimes may have had on the movie, he never recorded any of his crimes, which adds a further level of separation between the true story and what the film depicts.
The notorious serial killer Ted Bundy also influenced the found footage horror movie. In The Poughkeepsie Tapes, detectives interview Bundy in hopes of garnering some kind of insight or a pattern to help solve the crime. Surprisingly, the serial killer is complicit, and even attempts to help them find a motive by asking when he sexually assaults his victims. Bundy was executed in 1989 for the brutal murders of 30 known victims, but it's estimated that he killed many more. He primarily targeted women, much like the killer in The Poughkeepsie Tapes. Ultimately, the movie is somewhat based on real events, but only takes portions of them rather than adapting their full stories, as other horror movies have done. There were no actual snuff movies tied to any serial killer, and the character in the movie is original to the story.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1976) still enjoyed a theatrical release and yearly screenings, though. Some movies were, much like The Poughkeepsie Tapes, too realistic to even make it to the big screen (keep in mind, there used to be more independent movie theatres with the freedom to choose their billings, and they weren't always new releases, so getting your movie into big-screen matinee showings was easier than landing a VHS release). Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is perhaps the most infamous. The scenes of impalement, sexual violence, and the titular cannibalism fooled censors so effectively that the movie's still banned in several countries over four decades since its release. Faces of Death (1978) was another headline-maker, with the original proudly boasting its banning in "over 46 countries" due to the debatability of its death and violent scenes being wholly fictional. Despite being produced in the 1970s, Faces of Death still had to be heavily edited before it got its first unrestricted release in 2003.
The Poughkeepsie Tapes is actually one of the more recent examples of found-footage and horror controversy, despite its initial 2007 release being over a decade ago. The 70s and 80s were the golden age for this type of media. Just as True Crime shows have captured the cultural fascination with the macabre for 2020s audiences, "banned" movies were a regular talking point and made news headlines frequently during the era that the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Cannibal Holocaust, and Faces of Death were released. Making a movie so disturbing the censors banned it was almost a point of pride, and creators definitely used it as a subversive marketing tactic to drive sales. Fortunately, horror fans in the 21st century don't have to scour bootleg VHS stalls or have hushed back-room conversations at Blockbuster to get their hands on movies like The Poughkeepsie Tapes, and even though they remain controversial talking points, these movies have found a new, less restricted, lease of life thanks to modern streaming platforms. 2ff7e9595c
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