Project Hail Mary: Better Than Disclosure Day

Well, the wife and I saw Project Hail Mary last night on Amazon Prime (it just got there this month, after its release in theaters in March) and I  liked Project Hail Mary a lot more than Disclosure Day.  Which is not to say I didn't like Disclosure Day, and the two are not exactly the same exact genre, so maybe the comparison is unfair.   But they do have a lot in common: humans and interstellar intelligences, unlikely heroes, oddball humor, life and death situations on the planetary level.

But Project Hail Mary has a lot more soul in the story, more humanity in the best sense of the word, and a more memorable, lovable interstellar intelligence.   Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) is one of the best human emissaries to the stars -- Tau Ceti, in this case -- in all the movies and TV shows I've seen on that topic over the years, beginning with Captain Video and His Video Rangers in the 1950s on the shortly lived Dumont Channel.   Grace surprises us at numerous junctures, as does Rocky (James Ortiz), the intelligent being from the planet Erid (circling the real star 40 Eridani), who with Grace goes to Tau Ceti e (the planet named Adrian in the movie).  Rocky doesn't have a face, though if you look at Rocky carefully at certain times from certain angles, it almost seems he does (I say "he" because Ortiz does Rocky's voice).

Drew Goddard wrote the screenplay from Andy Weir's novel, not surprising given the excellent job they did with The Martian.  Like that movie, Project Hail Mary is a fine piece of science fiction that plays with the limits of scientific plausibility.   Indeed, because the threats and solutions in Project Hail Mary are interstellar, far wider in scope than Mars and Earth, its connection to science is stretched pretty far and thin.   But in the end -- and in the beginning and middle, too -- I felt I was seeing a riveting story that Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein could have written, unlike a central element of Disclosure Day which felt more in the province of Walt Disney.

I also had no idea about how Project Hail Mary would end, until the very end, which is always a big plus in a movie.   This derives from the complex, unusual character of Ryland Grace, astutely written and perfectly acted.   In addition, the cinematography was otherworldly convincing and topnotch.   If you're in the mood for a movie in which Earth is threatened by something from outer space, in a situation that unfurls in a way that Hugo Gernsback would have really enjoyed, you can't go wrong with Project Hail Mary.

Small World at 59E59: Cosmic Ideas

Tina and just got back from seeing Small World on stage on East 59th Street, a profound and memorable series of conversations between Walt Disney and Igor Stravinsky pitting popular culture vs. high culture, the king of animation vs. the 20th-century successor to Mozart, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky.   I don't know if Herbert Gans, author of Popular Culture and High Culture, has ever seen it, but if he did, I'd bet he'd love it.   Tina and I did.

Disney and Stravinsky did meet at least once in 1939, but no one knows what they talked about. Presumably about Disney's slowly-recognized masterpiece Fantasia, which put Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" music to animation.  Small World imagines these two describing competing visions of art, debating commercialism and artistic sincerity, with wit and passion and, against all odds, not only anger at times but mutual integrity.

Mark Shanahan plays Disney with his customary style and depth.  Shanahan, whom I've seen at least a dozen times in various roles, has a talent for inhabiting those roles, and in the case of historical characters, bringing them to life in front of your eyes.  I never met Disney, but I left the theater thinking I'd had the rare privilege of meeting this extraordinary film pioneer, and hearing what he had to say.  The same for Stephen D’Ambrose's Stravinsky - this is the first time I've seen D'Ambrose on stage, but I'd welcome the chance to see him again.

Small World (written by  Frederick Stroppel, directed by Joe Brancato) doesn't pull its punches.  Disney's take on the Nazis - he condemns them, but thinks there would be some good in getting Hitler to laugh - is unflinchingly portrayed.  (Most of us would prefer him just erased from existence.) Stravinsky comes across as all too quick to be converted to commercialism as the years in ensue.  These are flawed men, far more than just the best of their opinions, as we all are.

They also lived in a time very different from ours, in which avenues to fame and success were far fewer.  But if the pursuit of stardom has gotten has more routes in the 21st century, it hasn't gotten any easier, which makes Small World as relevant today as it was all those decades, almost a century, ago.

Here's a disclaimer.  Shanahan is an old friend.  He was my Masters student years ago at Fordham University, where he now teaches some great courses.  He did audiobooks for two of my novels, The Consciousness Plague and The Plot to Save Socrates, and wrote an Edgar-nominated radio play for my novelette, The Chronology Protection Case.

Should you therefore take what I say about Small World with a grain of salt?  Hey, maybe someone should write a play about this issue, too, and I could play the part of I. A Richards, who says all acts of creation, including reviews, should be judged only on their words, and not on the bios of their authors.

So see the play - Small World, that is - you'll love it.