The Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman influence?

leading from 

Prometheus: Afterthoughts

 
a) Once Ridley Scott mentioned that he was taking film viewers to the dark side of the moon, I wondered if this meant that we were going to encounter monsters associated with Pink Floyd

Gerald Scarfe

 which meant the movie "Pink Floyd: The Wall" released in 1982 with strange hallucinatory characters designed by illustrator Gerald Scarfe.  It took me quite a while but I became almost convinced that I would find something odd relating to 1970s music culture once I noticed that the blue Deacon seemed as if it might have been named the Deacon as a sort of a homage to Steely Dan's song "Deacon Blues" because Ridley Scott's brother Tony had made a film called "Crimson Tide" which was a title that found it's origin in the song "Deacon Blues".

b) Since Prometheus didn't make much use of of Giger's direct input,  having ideas drifting from the world of Ralph Steadman and Gerald Scarfe seemed to be a natural direction to go since they were part of the pop culture of the 1970s.

Ralph Steadman

c) So first I decided that the sight of the WETA's alternate Fifield Monster from the unused footage on the Prometheus DVD reminded me slightly of the Teacher from Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and then the fact it was rejected led them to create a design loosely inspired by something designed by Ralph Steadman whose work was often confused with Gerald Scarfe's work and I thought the drawing of one of the lizards from the Lizard Lounge in his drawings for Hunter S. Thompson's 1970s novel "Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas" drawings might have been the inspiration. Then I realised that the teeth and tongue of the trilobyte seemed oddly inspired by the teeth and tongue of the wife transforming into an hallucinatory monster in Pink Floyd's "The Wall". Once I had discovered this, it was easy to be convinced and then I suddenly wondered if the blue Deacon captured the essence of one of Gerald Scarfe's drawing of Mick Jagger.

Arthur Max

d) On November 14th, I googled Arthur Max's name to see if there was anything more about his background in the entertainments industry and it turned out that he was Pink Floyd's lighting designer during the bands' tours in the US and around the world in the early 70' and now he was production designer for Prometheus guiding and overseeing all the designs, was he the one who brought the Pink Floyd influence into the  Prometheus beasties . (see Wikipedia)

1. Gerald Scarfe inspired WETA's alternate Fifield monster?
2. Ralph Steadman inspired the Final Fifield monster?
3. Gerald Scarfe inspired Trilobyte tongue? 
4. Gerald Scarfe's Mick Jagger's influence on the Deacon?

The Dark Side Of The Moon

album cover for Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon

(leading from The Orrery )

a) In 2010 Ridley Scott was unveiling details about the Prometheus movie and then he mentioned that the film was the dark side of the moon. Obviously he wanted to express how shadowy the film was, but the other side to this seemed that he was throwing around the title of Pink Floyd's well known album released in 1973. Despite the phrase being used out of context with the idea of music, my sudden question became, how might this movie be inspired by Pink Floyd's music?

b) In the commentary for the Prometheus DVD released in 2012, Ridley revealed that they had been playing the music Dark Side of the Moon during the filming of the scene where David the android stepped into the Engineer's orrery for the first time. Ridley had nothing but the black set and needed something to help Michael Fassbender pretend that there was the magnificent holographic orrery around him and so he said to Michael, " Listen, I've got four 50-inch speakers. I'm going to play Dark Side Of the Moon. Is that okay?"

Pink Floyd - Rainbow Theatre 4 November 1973.

Michael replied "Fantastic" and so they went ahead

c) Something to point out is that Pink Floyd are well known for their elaborate laser and light shows during their concerts. Ridley liked to imagine the orrery scene being something that Pink Floyd would like to be seen playing in the centre of, and he could make such a boast because his production designer Arthur Max used to be the lighting designer for the band on their tours during the early 1970s

d) Another to point out is that this use of music is much like when Ridley played Mars Bringer of War (from Tomita's The Planets) around the set to evoke the mood of the scene to help Sigourney Weaver towards the end of Alien and that album was the one that Ridley originally wanted as the soundtrack .
SEE: "The Tomita Planets"

David in the engineer's orrery

1. Ridley Scott “The film will be really tough, really nasty. It’s the dark side of the moon. We are talking about gods and engineers. Engineers of space. And were the aliens designed as a form of biological warfare? Or biology that would actually go in and clean up a planet?” (Ridley tells Mike Goodridge of Screendaily.com, 26 April, 2010) 
2. Ridley Scott: Sell, this to Pink Floyd you know,
   Put Pink Floyd in the middle of that , they'd love it wouldn't they?
   Oh god, you know,  the reason why is on the day, I had nothing except the black set and David, so I said, "Listen, I've got four 50-inch speakers. I'm going to play Dark Side Of the Moon. Is that okay?"
   He said, "Fantastic."
   So we did this to Dark Side of the Moon. That was it. (Prometheus commentary, 01:13:20)
   

Henry Moore's "Prometheus" drawings

Leading from

 Prometheus Afterthoughts 

a) We understand that the giant head in the film Prometheus represents a member of the Engineer's race. However we might take a look at the fact that there are a frameworok of lines covering the head.  We might take a look at the images of Henry Moore's lithographs of "The head of Prometheus" from 1950 and notice an almost similar type of framework structure (perhaps connected with his drawings for an edition of Goethe's Promethée published that year. Here we have the Prometheus drawings "made using a method that Moore called ‘section-line’ drawing. He used white wax crayon directly on paper with crossing lines to show the three-dimensional nature of the form and then added details with coloured crayons and pencils. Finally he added watercolour or ink washes across it and emphasised shadows and extra details with pen and ink." (http://www.culture24.org.uk/)

another rendition of Head of Prometheus, c1950.
Collection: Bridgestone Museum of Art, Ishibashi Foundation, 
Tokyo. Photo: Brian Coxall, (http://www.culture24.org.uk/)

Henry Moore's Head of Prometheus 
( From the Promethée Portfolio of 15 lithographs)

b) Henry Moore in 1950 also created the image of Prometheus standing on a rock, with a latticework of lines running through his body and one arm half raised , this was a book cover for an edition of Goethe's Promethée as published in 1950 . At the beginning of Prometheus, we see the Engineer standing on a rock and soon is holding his hand before his face as his body begins to disintegrate.

HENRY MOORE's Prometheus on the Rock, 1950,

other works of Ralph Steadman's

leading from

Did Ralph Steadman inspire the final Fifield monster

Other examples of Steadman's work featuring variations of the same sort of general menacing grotesques

drawing from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Santas Claus

Portrait of a decent republican

illustration from The Cherry Wood Cannon

Did Ralph Steadman inspire the final Fifield monster?

leading from: The Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman influence?

Fear and Loathing in LV223 ! 

Ralph Steadman's illustration for the Lizard Lounge from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas".

Since I found reason to ask if the WETA alternate Fifield monster
had been inspired by an iconic cartoon image for Pink Floyd's The Wall, the next question I am asking is if the final Fifield monster was too inspired by artwork from a similar field. Maybe the obvious thing to do is to compare him to perhaps some of the gross caricatures by Gerald Scarfe's once fellow artist Ralph Steadman who had done artwork in a very similar vein. In his work one will find various humans who have been transformed into menacing toothy monstrosities of one kind or another and then to look at the idea that as with Gerald Scarfe, many people who have been made aware of Steadman's artwork might too find it hard to be inspired.

see other works of Ralph Steadman's

The final mutant Fifield
(Prometheus: The art of the film, p136)

Pink Floyd / Gerald Scarfe inspired WETA's alternate Fifield monster?

leading from: The Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman influence?

a) Ever since the trailer first showed the strange long limbs of some creature that would be later revealed to be the octopus like Trilobyte had I been looking for some signs of Pink Floyd as a point of reference. Since they didn't have HR Giger aboard the film project to offer creature designs that echoed rituals, beliefs and ideas that had been around for thousands of years, at least the creature department might be able to cope with paying attention to the dream worlds of 1970s rock music scene.

b) It was of course in October of 2012, days before the blu-ray DVD came out, I realised a connection between Steely Dan's Deacon Blues and the blue Deacon, and Deacon Blues also connected with the title of a Tony Scott movie Crimson Tide. However once I got a copy of the Blu-ray set, in the director's commentary for Prometheus, Ridley revealed that he used Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon for Michael Fassbender to act to during the scene where his character discovers the orrery in the Juggernaut ship. How much further were the phantoms from the 1970s rock scene supposed to be coming out to haunt us? This might beg the question about what inspired the final Fifield, which itself looks like a cartoonish caricature of primal grotesquery with it's face like surface of a pizza and oversized buckled teeth

Gerald Scarfe's illustration of the Teacher

Gerald Scarfe's illustration of the Teacher

c) Over the months I took another look at the teacher from Pink Floyd, a fierce character drawn by the satirical cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, a long limbed humanoid with a head roughly shaped like a kidney bean, and he was known for transforming his head into a hammer and shoving children through a meat mincer. I wondered how this might connect with the Prometheus world.

The giant Teacher stage puppet used during the stage shows

Gerald Scarfe

d) On April 8th 2013, I soon started to think about the alternate Fifield monster , the bean shaped head, the bluish skin, the elongated arms, I had finally found what for me was The Teacher.  I can't claim to have a clue what the art department were told to create in relation to this but the end result is enough of an echo of the concept and I think this entity got into the design consciously or unconsciously. In England, Gerald Scarfe has been very well known for his editorial cartoons for the Sunday Times, and perhaps his creative influence like his contemporary Ralph Steadman,  is one of those things that might be considered unavoidable for those growing up before the internet age.

WETA's alternate Fifield mutant

(source Blu-ray.com forum user CRS through AVPGalaxy.net)

alternate Fifield mutant later released online by Cinefec, August 27th, 2012

Gerald Scarfe's Mick Jagger's influence on the Deacon?

leading from: The Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman influence?

Pink Floyd: The Wall

1. Pink Floyd/Gerald Scarfe inspired WETA's alternate Fifield monster? 
2. Pink Floyd/ Gerald Scarfe inspired Trilobyte tongue

 

Pink Floyd / Gerald Scarfe inspired Trilobyte tongue ?

leading from: The Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman influence?

"The Flying Fanny"

 

In Pink Floyd's The Wall, another possible inspiration for a curiosity from Prometheus. In The Wall, a hallucination growing from phantom memories of his wife, she transforms into a preying mantis and then a flower that opens and snake head comes out of it, and then from the front a fanged maw with a penile head that comes and it has two eyes upon it. However the design of the maw has been made to look as if it's based on something from nature rather than someone's hallucination

In Prometheus, the creature known behind the scenes as the Trilobite (which Shaw has given birth to)opens up like a flower, and its central mouth is a fanged vaginaand from inside, the creature's ovipositor is a serpent like structure with an serpent like head with seemingly black eye holes. No exlanation has been given behind the snake like head.

"Deacon Blues" and the blue Deacon

Leading from Prometheus Afterthoughts

 

Deacon Blue/ Deacon Blues emerges in Prometheus

a) The odd question is what was the Deacon in Prometheus all about, why was it named so by the production team and why was it blue? Arthur Max said that the name to the creature because, Ridley said " It looks like a bishop's mitre, the evil deacon's pointed hat"  and they gave this creature a strange blue colour.

1. Ridley Scott dubbed this creature the Deacon, based on the pointed shape of its head, similar to a Bishop's head-dress.  (Prometheus Blu-Ray gallery notes) 
2. "Ridley said " It looks like a bishop's mitre, the evil deacon's pointed hat"" recalls Arthur Max. (Prometheus: The art of the film. p186)
3. see also exploration of origins of the phrase "The Evil Deacon" 

Deacon puppet

 b) Catalyst for exploring Deacon Blue connection
Someone in a forum asked people to post photos of the Deacon. October 5th October2012,  I began to think about posting a photograph of the band Deacon Blue and apologise later for getting the wrong Deacon. By the 7th, I started to think about the fact that the Deacon in Prometheus was blue in colour.

Scottish band Deacon Blue

c)  Deacon Blue, Deacon Blues and Steely Dan
The band Deacon Blue, a Scottish pop band formed in Glasgow during 1985 took its name from the 1977 song "Deacon Blues" by Steely Dan. In the lyrics of this song are the lines "They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, Call me Deacon Blues" where they're just the names of college football teams and the Deacons were the losers. Meanwhile Steely Dan take their name from the strap-on rubber dildo mentioned in William Burroughs fictional novel Naked Lunch.

record cover for Steely Dan's Deacon Blues

Donald Fagen told Rolling Stone magazine: "Walter and I had been working on that song at a house in Malibu. I played him that line, and he said, 'You mean it's like, 'They call these cracker a--holes this grandiose name like the Crimson Tide, and I'm this loser, so they call me this other grandiose name, Deacon Blues?' and I said 'Yeah!' He said, 'Cool, let's finish it.'" (source: wikipedia)

d)  Crimson Tide
If this creature was the "Deacon Blues", Rick McG asked then "who is the crimson tide?" It also happens that Tony Scott, the brother of Ridley Scott had made a movie released in 1995 called The Crimson Tide starring Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, where  "On a US nuclear missile sub, a young first officer stages a mutiny to prevent his trigger happy captain from launching his missiles before confirming his orders to do so." The Nuclear submarine of course is named the USS Alabama.

1. "On a US nuclear missile sub, a young first officer stages a mutiny to prevent his trigger happy captain from launching his missiles before confirming his orders to do so." (source: IMDB) 
2. The US nuclear submarine USS Alabama is assigned a patrol mission, to be available to launch its missiles in a preemptive strike if Radchenko attempts to fuel his missiles. Captain Frank Ramsey (Hackman) is the commanding officer of the sub, and one of the few commanders left in the Navy with any combat experience. He chooses as his new executive officer (XO) Lieutenant Commander Ron Hunter (Washington), who has an extensive education in military history and tactics, but no combat experience. (source: Wikipedia)  

Tony Scott

The Evil Deacon

the death of Thomas Becket took place in 117

The term: The Evil Deacon has come through the ages. Who exactly was the original Evil Deacon? One can be traced at least back to the 12th Century,  Hugh of Horsea who Alfred Duggan informs us that the renegade clerk became famous in Kent as the Evil Deacon and we can find from various sources that he was known for having gut his foot on the neck of the Thomas Becket, and scattered the rest his brains and blood once the top of the head had been chopped off.

1. "The exreceiver of the Honour of Canterbury still held the Archbishop's castleof Saltwood, where he had reinforced his garrison with a band of brigands led by Hugh of Horsea, the renegade clerk famous in Kent as the Evil Deacon"  (God and My Right By Alfred Duggan, Chapter 12)
2. "To the vociferations of Hugh of Horsea , a military sub-deacon, "where is the traitor?" (A History of England: Combining the Various Histories by Rapin, Henry, Hume, p180)
3. "The upper part of his skull was broken into pieces: and Hugh of Horses placing his foot on the archbishop's neck, with the point of his sword drew out the brains, and strewed them over the pavement"(A History of England: Combining the Various Histories by Rapin, Henry, Hume, p180)
4. Hugh of Horsea, the chaplain of Robert de Broc, who was with the knights, then thrust his sword into the wound, and scattered the brains over the floor. (Handbook to the cathedrals of England: Southern division, Volume 2, Issue 2, p358)