(Click Here to hear the VIDEO DEATH RAY podcast about ROLLERBALL)
I love 1975's Rollerball.
I first saw the Norman Jewison movie as an adult while writing a comedy screenplay that was set in a 1970's vision of the future.
That project required me to spend weeks watching films like Logan's Run, Omega Man, Futureworld, Zardoz, Soylent Green, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and more. Each movie offered a ridiculous world of tomorrow -- and don't get me wrong, that's part of what makes them so great. I adore the very 70's aesthetic about the future -- whether it's the slightly-futuristic fashion, the oversized super-intelligent talking computers, the funky pseduo-Euro architecture, the relentless use of excessive snap-zooms, or the general self-imporance of message-y post-Viet Nam science-fiction that was about to be made extinct by Star Wars and dozens of Star Wars knock-offs.
"I'm feelin' mean," Jonathan E in William Harrison's short story Roller Ball Murder |