Certainly the apparent attempt to ape (ha, ha) Quest for Fire, which created a primitive “language” grunted by its characters, was a major boner. And, of course, it was being adapted from a best-selling, “serious” novel. Daryl Hannah, fresh from her triumph in Splash, was hired to portray the precocious Ayla. John Sayles, a man with a reputation for writing intelligent genre scripts, was hired to do the screenplay. Yet it’s obvious this was meant to be a serious, artistic production. However silly her politics, her books have a reputation for scrupulously recreating the way life was lived by ancient peoples. And who can blame her? I haven’t read her stuff, but certainly it can’t be anywhere near as poor as this cinematic fiasco. In fact, she sued the producers for $40 million dollars. To be fair, Auel was horribly embarrassed by the awful flick that was “adapted” from her book. You know, until the weaker, dumber males somehow overthrew their wise stewardship, leading to war, capitalism, the ravaging of the environment and Baywatch. Ayla’s the Cro-Magnon woman who apparently invented pretty much every mental discipline and physical discovery known to Man.Īuel seems to be one of those feminists who believes that women were once the stronger, wiser sex, who judiciously ruled over just and environmentally correct paradises. Our movie is adapted from the first of Jean Auel’s cinderblock sized novels following the prehistoric adventures of Ayla. A particularly inane strain, this is the type of feminism wherein the female lead is invariably a brain surgeon or nuclear physicist, but an extremely hot one. This pretentious little opus managed to meld the worst aspects of Quest of Fire seriousness with the Hot Babe aspect of Rachel Welch’s One Million Years B.C., seasoned with knee-jerk Hollywood feminism. Still, the funniest “Cave Person” movie is 1986’s Clan of the Cave Bear. This explains why most recent movies about cavemen have been sex-oriented comedies (Caveman, Cave Girl Island, etc.), openly mocking the ragtag genre cliches. After this thoughtful presentation, any caveman movie that played by the old rules was likely to be laughed out of the theater. This film realistically presented half evolved humans living a horrid, brutal life. Then in 1981 the ultimate caveman movie, Quest for Fire, was produced. By then, audiences were too savvy to do anything but laugh when confronted by cave people fighting T-Rexes. These old fashioned “caveman” movies had pretty much died out by the early ’70s. Other standard features: beauteous cave women, with nice teeth, mascara, hairdos and fur bikinis the Neanderthals being represented by straggly Brunettes, and the more advanced tribe being attractive blondes and a climatic cataclysmic earthquake or volcanic eruption, destroying the weak and corrupt (and some dinosaurs, of course), leaving the survivors purged of the bad element. Killing his father (or the dino) the hero gains the heroine and becomes the leader of the new tribe. The son prospers there, and ultimately helps his adoptive “family” fight off a potentially devastating attack, either from dinosaurs or, more likely, from his father’s tribe. The woman who finds him, smitten, saves his life, and he is adopted by the second tribe. This tribe is made up of more advanced, and generally more attractive people. On the brink of death, he’s found by a beautiful member of a rival tribe. Here’s the standard plot: a guy (usually the son of the brutal leader of a brutish tribe) is cast out from his people. For instance, the Romeo and Juliet setup, with a person from one “tribe” falling in love with a member of another tribe. But other rules have remained surprisingly durable. The silliest, of course, is that cave people and dinosaurs existed side by side. Alan's miniature environments are included in art collections throughout the US and Europe.Ever since the granddaddy of all “cave people” movies, 1942’s One Million B.C., certain precepts have ruled over the genre. There are never people present, only things they have left behind garbage, graffiti, or a tip on a diner table, all give the work a sense of motion and a storyline. Scenarios are played out through the use of inanimate objects in the scene. There is a narrative element to the work. The pieces are usually not exact representations of existing locations, but rather a combination of details from many different locations along with much of the detail from the artist's imagination. Complete with complex interior views and lighting effects, a major work can take several months to complete. Then the penny drops, along with your jaw."Alan Wolfson creates handmade miniature sculptures of urban environments. Marie writes: At first you think you're looking at a photograph.
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