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Bonus! The Making of Judy Garland's Christmas Special ... and Zardoz (Patreon)

Published:
2025-12-22 17:00:12
Imported:
2025-12
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I usually post bonus videos on Sundays but this one's very Christmas-themed so I wanted to get it out before the holidays pass by! So please enjoy a bonus-bonus video about The Judy Garland Christmas Special, one of the greatest Christmas specials ever made: Incredibly charming, a little bit sloppy, starring very talented folks ... and of course there's a touch of behind the scenes drama. The full package! In this week's bonus video, we're going behind the scenes of one of my very favorite Xmas specials.

And! There's also some more to say about The Wizard of Oz. Thank you to everybody who let me know that I forgot to mention Zardoz in the last bonus video about weird Wizard of Oz adaptations, so we're going to dive in to Sean Connery's very bizarre followup to the James Bond films, and why I think Zardoz accidentally has something surprisingly timely to say about how artificial intelligence is plaguing our lives these days.

Backup link to the video: https://youtu.be/lhH_kgz3oTY

Files

Bonus! The Making of Judy Garland's Christmas Special ... and Zardoz

The Judy Garland Christmas Special is one of the greatest Christmas specials ever made: Incredibly charming, a little bit sloppy, starring very talented folks ... and of course there's a touch of behind the scenes drama. The full package! In this week's bonus video, we're going behind the scenes of one of my very favorite Xmas specials. And! There's also some more to say about The Wizard of Oz. Thank you to everybody who let me know that I forgot to mention Zardoz in the last bonus video about weird Wizard of Oz adaptations, so we're going to dive in to Sean Connery's very bizarre followup to the James Bond films, and why I think Zardoz accidentally has something surprisingly timely to say about how we're currently plagued by artificial intelligence.

Comments

Sky

These AI rants are tiresome to listen to. It comes across as fragile and at this point it's so overdone that it comes across as in-group virtue signalling. Audiences either recognize quality or they don't. Nobody cares what art is. It's only brought up in an effort to exclude. Usually, when it offends the political, economic and social sensibilities of a person or group. The foundation of an artistic process is having something to say. If you live in a world where yourself and everyone you know lives in material abundance there is still the drive to achieve status with other people. However, it cannot be fulfilled by material means. After all, if you are unable to materially differentiate yourself from others then you can at least differentiate yourself through some sort of skill such as being the best painter. Therefore, I would say AI content generation actually has the opposite impact. When the best painting in the world can be produced with a short phrase the only thing that remains is the skill of the artist to be valued and the process of creation. Even in a world of material abundance you can at least say I'm better at slapping colored oil on to a canvas than anyone else. The process subsequently becomes more important than the output and it's very noticeable in online discussions that artists spend more time talking about process now than output. Sure, they will say the gen AI output is flawed but inevitably that will shift to the output being irrelevant and only the process mattering. The creation itself will matter less than the story of it's creation.

Steve McLean

"act all the way through a note" is such a brilliant articulation of what differentiates artists of their caliber. I was having a discussion with someone (it was Boomer vs Gen Z) about why Liza's version of "But The World Goes 'Round" from 'New York New York' is so much more riveting than the version recently performed on Broadway. THIS is what I was trying to explain. Stephen Sondheim famously said, "I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done."

Trevor MacIsaac

I think that you're off with some of your fundamental presuppositions. It's not that nobody cares what art it, it's that nobody can define what art is. It a nebulous concept by nature and as such, it can only be defined within the eye of each audience member. Art, whatever it is, can't exist even as a concept absent that. For countless works of expression, the only audience that ever exists is an audience of one - the artist themselves, and that's the only times that it only matters what the artist thinks about their work. Anytime it's shown to at least one other person, then the artist's opinon is only that - just one opinion out of 2, or 100, or a million (depending on the size of the audience) on what the work means. That's what the power of any art is, which means you're belief that it will only be the process that matters to the concept of art is fundamentally flawed, because that's just not what it is - and if that's ever becomes what the entirety of art is considered to be, than I believe it will be indicative of a completely different concept. As you noted, AI is able to make works of art that rival the greatest masters, but what I think that people rebel against is that these works can only be generated through scanning the work of the human creators. Thus, every story that AI writes, or painting it creates, or song it sings is not an original work, it's a soulless amalgamation. But is that still art? Under your definition, maybe. After all, it's was created by a process. But, under my definition, art requires a human mind to create and at least one to observe. Anything else would be just looking at a tree or a waterfall and calling it art. It may be beautiful, but it's fundamentally, it's just a thing. Right now, I think that's how people see AI generated content. As long as people remain fascinated with the spark of creativity, even if it's only their own, and only ever observed by them, I have to believe that opinion will be shared by most for a long time to come

Sky

"It's not that nobody cares what art it, it's that nobody can define what art is." You can come out with an a ironclad proof tomorrow that movies are not art and it won't make a bit of difference to people. The overwhelming majority do not care who made it, how it was made or whether it is considered art. What they care is whether they found it enjoyable to consume. The AI gen tool is a generative tool that relies upon a human input to narrow the possibility space of the output. You can say this is a very low bar to meet but it still meets the bar of a human input as part of the output. You could almost make some kind of statement with homeopathic art. These discussions are so tiresome because they are so blatantly based on arbitrary exclusion and backwards reasoning. A computer may be the best in the world at chess but people still enjoy playing chess and competing against each other.

mattbaume

Just popping in to let everyone know that debate & discussion about art & technology is great, but I delete comments that get personal.

Delenn Irving

Interesting how retention works: "Zardoz set in 2293 or remember to wear pants whenleaving the house? Zardoz or pants? So, Zardoz was set in 2293 and heavily influenced by the Wizard of Oz? Direct to long term memory. The pants? Oh, shift those to dream staging and bring up the old nightmare of showing up to work naked, because that one's always a good laugh!"

Zardogs! Zardogs!

It’s the theft that is the problem at the core of generative AI. The input is stolen. It was taken without permission. Sure, all art is a human synthesizing their own experience, which includes all the art they’ve ever experienced, but it’s filtered through all their experience. AI is literal. It’s using an exact copy and spitting out a result that is based on the original with no filter. There’s also the fact that it’s being shoved down our throats. I want to be able to say “no” and the tech companies have made that incredibly difficult. Then there’s the economic bubble of it all. The artificial demand those companies have created has become way more of the economy than it deserves to be, creating a bubble that is going to have terrible effects when it pops. So, it’s not just “virtue signaling,” it’s caring about the rights of artists to not be stolen from and how corporations abuse them and us with predictable bad outcomes. Does AI have its uses? Sure. But it’s not ALWAYS the answer, which is how it’s being handled now.

Darren Simon

Such vigor of debate, I had to rewatch to try and catch the spark. I like Zardoz, but I know its not for everyone. I feel like at some level its asking if what we see as real is just entertainment for someone or something more powerful. Much like Judy asking "hey where did those dancing Santas come from?", are we suspending disbelief so that our reality makes sense? I always enjoy your takes just the same...be well.

Uma Ribeiro

Great video! Also I received your book for Christmas! It was on my wishlist for a long time, I’m so excited. It’s so interesting

Paul Anderson

John Boorman's script for Lord Of The Rings was absolutely batshit including sex rituals with Galadriel and an underage Arwen. You can read it online but might have a better experience reading ABOUT it. Collider has a great rundown. This script had two cinematic offspring. Zardoz was Boorman's creative world building outlet after being declined for Lord Of The Rings. Excalibur (1981) used research, production plans, and set designs from pitching Lord Of The Rings as well as an earlier Merlin script. So there are elements of Middle Earth throughout Excalibur.

Patrick

Please add auto-generated subtitles to your videos. I don’t see any for this one - it can’t be enabled. There’s some tools that allow free transcription now if YouTube for some reason doesn’t create them. Patreon also offers them for videos hosted on Patreon.

mattbaume

Oh thank you for the heads up -- YouTube is supposed to automatically set the language to English but stopped for some reason, so it wasn't generating captions. Should be working now.