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Fantastical Literary Celluloid Icons
Author: Simon Sellars • Apr 15th, 2007 •Category: alternate worlds, Ballardosphere, Borges, celebrity culture, film, Philip K. Dick, television
Back in 1986, Kurt Vonnegut (RIP) made an amusing cameo in Rodney Dangerfield’s fake-fart laden masterpiece Back to School.
But did you also know that William Gibson appeared in Wild Palms alongside Jim Belushi; that Philip K. Dick guest-starred in a 1971 episode of Bewitched; that Jorge Luis Borges stole the show in an ep of The Love Boat; and that J.G. Ballard tore up the scenery in the 1973 actioner Airport as Dr. Maitland, ‘the enigmatic psychoanalyst who diagnoses the condition of pilot Charlton Heston, a grounded astronaut who endeavors to pierce the stratosphere in a bulky 747 bearing the flag of an imaginary American airline’?
That’s according to the fearless Chris Nakashima-Brown, who gets his freak on over at No Fear of the Future.
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Ahh… they all fall for Hollywood’s charms, eh? And don’t forget Marshall McLuhan’s hilarious bit in Annie Hall when he tells a yappy Medium waiting to get into a movie that’s he got The Message all wrong.
Thomas Pynchon did indeed played appeared in Star Wars as the Imperial officer who fires up the Death Star energy beam, he did NOT play the part of Darth Vader as was rumored back in 1977.
What a pity!
Airport ’73- Love the pre credits scene when Maitland flushes the “Smoking gun” Watergate tape down the toilet and kills the bald CIA guy tailing him… Worthy of The Ipcress File, that scene.
So who’s going to post the Ballard clip to YouTube so the rest of us can see it?
supervert, no one is! it don’t exist. chris’s piece is a flight of fancy…