Have you ever seen this? It’s a clip of Jim Henson’s short film Time Piece from way back in 1966. This Academy Award nominated film was Henson’s attempt at experimental film-making. Although its intentionally disjointed in its visual collage format, you can see that there is a narrative being told. To this day, I still have no idea what’s going on, but I know its surreal. And clearly there is a message about the passing of time in it.
I think I first saw this film in its entirety as a kid on PBS and I was really freaked out, especially the scenes of them painting the elephant.
Here’s some really cool behind-the-scenes footage on the project and its impact.
The Jim Henson Company has made Time Piece available for purchase on iTunes. It’s worth checking out. Henson and MuppetWiki have a bunch of information, production shots and promotional materials from the project as well.
So how does this work its way into comics?
Well in the late 1960s, Henson and longtime head writer Jerry Juhl worked on adapting an idea Henson had written a screenplay called A Tale of Sand that was never produced.
This story has been unearthed and is going to be published as a graphic novel, A Tale of Sand is being released by Archaia Comics as an original graphic novel with art by Ramón Pérez.
So what’s it about? According to Archaia’s press release
A Tale of Sand follows scruffy everyman Mac, who wakes up in an unfamiliar town, and is chased across the desert of the American Southwest by all manners of man and beast of unimaginable proportions.
Well that sounds like fun. Count me in! This will be available this fall.
Ridiculously Awesome 