Passamaquoddy

Another “Verne Week” has gone off to its final Mysterious Voyage. Our little town of Passamaquoddy returns to its regular lives. Banners are folded and stored for another day. Merchants have restocked their shelves with their wares and the Temporary Motel is back to full vacancy. “Spot’s Playful Pooh” has been fully restored atop the 20,000 Leagues lagoon and finally, Jeffrey C. Salt got his cellphone back from atop the monorail track. We still can’t figure out how he dropped that there, but that is Salt for you.

Plans are already in the salmon net for next year’s celebration which promises to be a bigger and better celebration. Rumor has it that over on the West Coast, Nemo has returned to a submarine ride, unfortunately, it was the wrong Nemo. Here are some pictures from that attraction.

 

We hope you have enjoyed your week with Jules Verne. Please let us know if you enjoyed yourself or of anything you would like to see next year.

Please visit our sponsors. We can’t thank them enough:

All About the Mouse

All About the Corn

Many people consider Walt Disney to have been a visionary much like Jules Verne. It is therefore appropriate that many of Disney’s adventure films were based on Verne’s work and that the first big budget live action feature was built from Verne’s most popular novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. With Walt close to the production, the risky film went wildly over-budget, making the film’s success crucial to the longevity of the studio.

Verne’s novel is an astonishing examination of future technology, but like his other works, the story is basically a series of events connected by a thematic structure. This was the first thing that Disney addressed in bringing the Nautilus to life. They hired a screenwriter who built a more cohesive arcing story that became a template for hundreds of Disney films to come. To helm the picture, Disney hired Richard Fleischer, the son of one of Disney’s most venomous competitors from their early animation days. Not only did that hiring mend many wounds between the two moguls, it delivered a wonderful film.

The Disney story follows a Professor Arronax, a scientist interested in disproving the existence of a killer sea monster. Teamed with his assistant played by Peter Lorre and an adventurous Kirk Douglas, the find the sea monster is actually a fantastical water transport. A submersible laboratory commanded by the phenomenal brain, Captain Nemo. At first Arronax is taken under Nemo’s scholarly spell, but eventually learns to understand where the megalomaniac has gone astray. The story takes them into battle with natives, into the belly of Nemo’s private hideout inside of a volcano, and most excitingly – into battle with a giant squid.

Bringing the squid to life as well as all the fantastical locations fell to the special effects team including the beautiful matte painting work of Peter Ellenshaw. With a sweeping musical score by Disney composer Paul Smith is nicely heroic and mysterious, a good click track for the film in general.

Kirk Douglas’ tongue in cheek portrayal begins a long line of Disney heroes, following his well designed character template. But it is James Mason’s powerful performance as Nemo that keeps the Nautilus afloat and the fantastical story somehow believable.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a wonderful film in the studio canon, well worthy of study or just an evening’s entertainment. There are great behind the scenes elements available that are well worth hunting down, most interestingly –footage of the squid battle done on a clear day with a beautiful colored sunset.

I swear by my tattoo.

A few years back, our little town of Passamaquoddy created quite a stir when it closed one of its classic attractions and replaced it with what amounted to be a variation on a Midway game of chance. People complained, not only because they lost an old friend, but also because the ‘theme’ of the new game was sort of gross. For those of you who have not seen the game yet, each contestant is armed with a big plastic ‘scooper’ and you race others to pick up the mess left behind by a big wood cutout of a dog named “Spot”. Over time, the new attraction has garnered some fans, but many of us older folk long for this week – Jules Verne week- because of one wonderful thing. On this week, the towns Quoddesigners pull away the “Spot’s Playful Pooh” game revealing the “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” Ride fully intact underneath… waiting to take riders on its wonderful sea voyage.

Last night, after a showing of the film that inspired the ride, they opened the submarines up and I was in line to experience it again. The line to the nautilus was long as usual and it is slow to board. But hearing “A Whale of a Tale” and other seafaring music in the queue line after such a long time made the wait ever so enjoyable. Finally we got to the submarine. How majestic they look coming into dock. And even though I did fall a bit on the stairs – they seem to get steeper as I get older – it was like old home week inside. I scurried down to my flip down seat, covered with a regal, mahogany pleather, and got my first view outside my porthole. Just out the window the wonderful detail of barnacle crusted metal dock work separated us from another Nautilus a few feet away.

When the ship was underway, Captain Nemo’s voice welcomed us aboard the Nautilus and he chimed in to inform us of what was going on during our long voyage. Starting with some fighting lobster, the creatures grow in size as the ride progresses. Highlights include the first appearance of sharks – which unfortunately involved the creatures being pulled along by a cable which had accidentally caught a lost t-shirt. So much for the magic in that case. As our subs descend deeper under water, you pass through a blanket of bubbles. The effect has been teased for years, but I find it enthralling… In addition to the bubble curtain, the Quoddesigners placed objects to block out the sun at these locations making each descent take you to a darker place. Sure, you can always see the actual water line just a few feet above but it is well hidden in this rider’s opinion.

Other highlights include going under the polar ice caps and viewing a surprisingly Disney looking Sea Serpent entertaining some mermaids. But the Peace Day Resistance (Verne was French after all), was the Giant Squid attack. The attack and electrocution of the squid is well executed and a fitting end to our voyage.

After it was over I saw many Passamaquoddians in line for their second or third ride.

In closing, the ride was not a perfect ride, but I have many, many fond memories of it. But, each person’s fond memories are unique to them and don’t always translate. I heard some guy say that hes had better sea journeys 134 yards west of the 20000 Leagues ride in the Atlantic Ocean. That same person won a golden pooper scooper on “Spot’s Playful Pooh”.

With Verne Week halfway over, we’ve got a a scheduling reminders and an update for you.

My favorite element of Disney’s telling of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is in the casting. Not every role is a perfect fit but two stand out as great achievements.

The first is most obviously Kirk Douglas in the role of Ned Land. Mister Douglas had already picked up a couple Oscar nominations by the time he signed on to Disney’s take on the Jules Verne story. But his previous roles were far more serious roles. His fun-loving portrayal of the harpoon hunter quickly personified a “Disney performance”, one where viewers have an unwritten contract with the performer that ‘everythings gonna turn out okay, let’s have some fun’. He even finds time to perform a song or two during the film, one time doing some fancy guitar work that may not musically make sense, but it sure is clever. It is important to understand Kirk Douglas’ take on Ned Land to fully appreciate the next performance.

James Mason also had a big career on stage and screen long before taking command of the Nautilus as Captain Nemo. In a film where the stars work within their clean family film performances, James Mason did not get the memo. His take on Nemo could easily fit into a serious biopic of a troubled, ingenious man. His dark characterization is so unique in the film - so un-Disney - that it is easy to see Nemo as a truly stellar individual, concerned only with his slanted view of a perfect world.

Hats off to both of them…. You gotta love it.

I spent the afternoon at Passamaquoddy’s Ellenshaw Museum. Appropriately, the biggest draw in the museum was paintings from “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, based on Jules Verne’s classic novel. This was one of the earliest collections of work with Disney and Ellenshaw, and its beautiful stuff. Most interestingly, many of the earlier matte paintings were actually painted on glass on location. The camera placed behind the sheet of glass with the distant image merging with the painting a few feet away.

As the sun rises on Jules Verne week, we Passamaquoddians take some time to think of the wonders of Jules Verne. How did he make that thing fly? And what about that boat thing, how did he get that to float? And what about that thing that went to the moon? More amazing are the things that he created that we still use to this day: Not only did he invent the perpetual gear engine, but he also gave the sticky notes their stick and invented the George Forman Grill.

In full disclosure, the brothers over at the comb and tome were telling me that we got Verne all wrong. That Verne was actually a french author who created fictional visions of the future. Now I was sure that I was dealing with idiots so I turned a blender on to drown out their blubbering. For the record, Verne also invented two of the speeds on the blender… grind and puree’.

So first thing on the agenda kicking off Verne week is our 8 mile marathon! (Interestingly, I read about a television station out west that also had an 8 mile marathon. But theres involved showing a M & M movie multiple times, back to back)

For this run, runners will travel from Coopers Light… North past the Temporary motel toward downtown… There they’ll pass Fitch’s Great Escape and run through Sand dollar Ella’s Castle. From here they’ll head back toward the harbor passing the Kickin’ Krabaret and ChumShop Earth. Then they’ll come to the end back at Coopers Light.

We’ll offer updated reports as the race progresses. Now on with the race! And on with VERNE WEEK!

UPDATE! 7:00 The race time is here.

This year one of our local sponsors, “O-me O-my” is giving out their signature “Herring Whip” at mile marker 4.5. For those of you unfamiliar with this delicacy, its basically a whipped herring soft serve ice cream. You can also get it in a swirl with sardine whip.

More updates as the race progresses.

Update: 12 Noon… Well, we have some marathon winners… All three of them are out-of-towners and were sketchy with responses when asked questions to find out who they are… We’ll post some pictures of the winners later on in the day…

Additionally, we have had a major problem on the field today. We had 65 runners start off the race. 3 of them finished the run, 61 of them got sick from their herring whip as the “O-Me O-My” experimented with a Gefilte Fish flavor. The 1 remaining runner stopped of in Sand Dollad Ella’s and is still seated at the bar, a bit too drunk to finish. Again, pictures later.

Congratulations to our winners, whoever they are…