Remembering Sara Campbell… September 6, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , trackbackThe other evening I was browsing through some old film magazines and picked up the Fall, 1979 issue of CINEFANTASIQUE, which featured ALIEN on the cover. Old magazines are fantastic time capsules, particularly those from before the Internet and before industry marketing teams turned the mags into publicity rags. But what particularly interested me was the letters section. It’s here you get the real meat of both the mag and the times in which it was published. Something like the forums that litter the Internet today, the letters columns of those old mags really give an insight into what people thought back in the day.
So I noticed a short letter berating the editor of CINEFANTASTIQUE for his negative editorials regards the popular science fiction films of the time- namely STAR WARS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and ALIEN. “I keep running across articles devoted to films which you feel are beneath your standards,” the letter stated. The writer of the letter contended that rather than being the film magazine with a ‘Sense of Wonder’ as proclaimed on the editorial, it was instead one with “a sense of hypocrisy”. Indeed, the writer of the letter noted that CINEFANTASTIQUE evidently believed that “STAR WARS was too much fun, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is nice, but its aliens too cute, and ALIEN is too yucchy and besides, it reminds you of a still you saw from PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES.”
The response from the editor, the late Frederick S Clarke, argued that he did indeed have a sense of wonder, still feeling the buzz from watching 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY back in 1968. He just didn’t seem to think much of the then-modern offerings.
I noted with some irony that I have a similar feeling nowadays, loving STAR WARS and ALIEN as old classics and disliking all the modern cgi-dominated mindless dreck we have now. Times change and yet they don’t. But what really struck me was the name of the writer of the letter- Sara Campbell. I knew that name.
Sara Campbell will forever be linked, in an albeit minor way, with BLADE RUNNER lore. Few people appreciate the fact that when BR was released, it really bombed in spectacular fashion. I think it grossed only $17 million on a $24 million production budget that needed $50 million to break even. No-one saw it and generally critical opinion was very negative. Back in late 1982 the film was over, dead, finished, and the industry was very different back then. Films didn’t turn up on £20 DVDs and Blu-Rays after four months, they disappeared for years. Films were only kept alive by their fans, who read magazines about them, collected memorabilia and the like. There was no Internet to gather together the thoughts and love of fans of movies in forums.
Here in England I watched BR dumbstruck, fell head over heels in love what has always been since then my favourite film, and watched in dismay as the film faded away out of public consciousness. It was a Cult movie back when the word Cult meant something. When in College a few years later, a lecturer looking through my art folder saw an image I had drawn from BR and waxed lyrical about the film… I remember feeling how odd it was to actually meet someone other than my mate Andy who shared my high opinion of the film. Of course years later thanks to video, BR became popular, the Directors Cut got released, critics rewrote their opinion of the film… but for those of us who saw it back in 1982, I honestly think BR feels different, special in way later fans could never understand.
Sara Campbell was one of those fans from 1982. Just as I was blown away, over in America, in Oshkoshi, Wisconsin, so was Sara, someone I would never know or meet but who shared with me a love of a special film. Sara got together with a few friends and they made a fanzine about BR, titled CITYSPEAK. You can find the first issue online if you run its title through a search engine. It’s a fascinating window into a time when BR was something new, before it became imitated, before it became popular. Back when it was something special, almost secret. Sara’s love of the film shines through. Reading CITYSPEAK I’m dragged back to those old days, how it felt back then. Later when the film became popular and the book RETROFITTING BLADE RUNNER came out, Sara’s name was mentioned as one of the first voices to popularise and analyse the film. It was the first time I had read about her and her fanzine devoted to BR.
I never got the opportunity to know or meet Sara on Internet forums, share memories of those golden days of 1982. Sara never got to see her favourite film in either its flawed Directors Cut version or completed Final Cut. Having produced three issues of CITYSPEAK, Sara died in 1985.
But its funny how someone can live on, in the thoughts recorded in letters to magazines or self-produced fanzines, so that someone half-way across the world who loved the same movie can share those thoughts and opinions, and wonder what they might have thought of the films later renaissance. I guess Sara would have been excited about the Final Cut as I was last year- I guess she would have loved it. Its a damned shame she never saw it.
So how odd the strange coincidence after all these years, reading through an old film mag and stumbling upon that letter by Sara Campbell some three years before BR came around? How weird is that? Anyway, I urge any fans of BLADE RUNNER to run CITYSPEAK through a search engine and read that fanzine and re-live that buzz from 1982, or if they saw the film years afterwards on video, learn what it was like back then for the original fans.
Comments»
Very nice post.
I remember the letter you mention, and Fred’s response to it - if not word for word, then in their essence.
Fred simply thought science fiction could be more than mindless fun. Just because something was popular didn’t mean it was above criticism. I never found anything hypocritical in that.
Hi Steve, thanks for your comment.
I think Sara was probably brooding over the magazine’s cover stories on the films which (I would imagine) generated improved sales of the magazine. CINEFANTASTIQUE’s editorial stance was actually refreshing, especially when compared to mags today- advertising revenue often seems dependent on good reviews these days. What I found interesting when re-reading it was how my views seem to mirror Freds, in that I prefer older films to much that is released today, just as he preferred 2001 to the then-new STAR WARS and CE3K. Perhaps its a generation-thing and the new cgi stuff just isn’t my generation. Some of the current mindless stuff makes the 70s stuff seem postively Kubrickian.
Beautifully written.
I reprinted this weblog (with link) on KippleZone.com, which also features the first edition of CITYSPEAK.
ghostof82,
It just dawned on me. May I use this blog entry on the KippleZone website in tribute to Sara Campbell? If not…please let me know.
Cheers.
~ Kipple