Tuesday, August 28, 2007

~My Little Schizophrenic Spider by Clarke O'Gara~



Sarah looked at it with her hand clasped over her mouth, then burst out laughing. "What?” Her bother Andy shouted from the living room.

"Andy, Andy, it’s so funny, this time it pulled out the circuitry from the back of its own head!” She rolled around her room ecstatic as Andy rushed up stairs.

"You’re doing this on purpose now Sarah.” He accused, with his stern ‘older-brother’ tone.

"Well of course, duh! Why else would I be playing with this crap? I set up the last one so it was schizophrenic, that’s why he killed himself. This one is going to be manic depressive.” She laughed.

“Since when do you know about schizophrenia?” he asked. She replied by tossing her father’s Dictionary of Psychology at him. “How are you making them mentally unstable?”

"It’s easy,” she said pulling the A.I. chip out of the little anthropoid, “you just remove the right emotional limits in the software and you can replicate nearly any mental illness,” she chuckled again, “you really should have seen it Andy. He went crazy tried to rip out its own A.I. chip.”

Andy used to shout at Sarah for pulling the legs off spiders she found outside. Now he was sickened by her nonchalant torture of consciousness. “Do they have sadism in that dictionary?” he scowled.

***A moral question, for sure. It makes you wonder about the two of them, their histories. A nice turn-around (usually the little boy is the budding sociopath).***

2 comments:

Comrade Kevin said...

This image graced a collage I made for the movie. Our budget was quite low, so we had to make do with the barest of special effects. Instead, I plowed through the director's Scientific American and National Geographic to come up with something appropriately bizarre.

Oddly enough, this contraption, whatever it is became a kind of trademark when the film became the sleeper hit of 2019. It graced a million t-shirts and in sticker form, the backs of several hundred thousand automobiles.

It was hell trying to purchase the rights to the image. We had a made verbal agreement with the owner months beforehand and thought we had purchased it outright. We were a week into post-production when we found out that due to some legal loophole, we weren't granted sole legal rights to the original photograph.

We could still purchase the rights, but at a price four times the original amount we had been quoted. Paramount had a fit, swallowed hard, and agreed to pay out. This created no small amount of trepidation on our part. If the film had flopped, we would have certainly had some explaining to do.

Anonymous said...

My Little Schizophrenic Spider.

Sarah looked at it with her hand clasped over her mouth, then burst out laughing.

”What?” Her bother Andy shouted from the living room.

”Andy, Andy, it’s so funny, this time it pulled out the circuitry from the back of its own head!” She rolled around her room ecstatic as Andy rushed up stairs.

”You’re doing this on purpose now Sarah.” He accused, with his stern ‘older-brother’ tone.

”Well of course, duh! Why else would I be playing with this crap? I set up the last one so it was schizophrenic, that’s why he killed himself. This one is going to be manic depressive.” She laughed

“Since when do you know about schizophrenia?” he asked. She replied by tossing her father’s Dictionary of Psychology at him. “How are you making them mentally unstable?”

”It’s easy,” she said pulling the A.I. chip out of the little anthropoid, “you just remove the right emotional limits in the software and you can replicate nearly any mental illness,” she chuckled again, “you really should have seen it Andy. He went crazy tried to rip out its own A.I. chip.”

Andy used to shout at Sarah for pulling the legs off spiders she found outside. Now he was sickened by her nonchalant torture of consciousness. “Do they have sadism in that dictionary?” he scowled.