Robert Nelson

Robert Nelson died recently. He was an experimental filmmaker.

I hadn't heard of Robert Nelson but I had seen a few of his films in college.

I was a member of the Tech Weathermen. The club had nothing to do with the Weather Underground. The Tech Weathermen was formed by my friend Walter Kubilius mostly to put on film festivals. It had some beer busts, too, I think.

Walter would program the little festivals with experimental films, safety films, pornographic films and certainly other interesting genres (I wish I had a better memory).

Walter included some of Robert Nelson's films in these programs. I had only vague memories of these films.

One that is on YouTube is "Oh Dem Watermelons." (WARNING: If you would be offended by a scene featuring a naked woman and a watermelon, don't click on that link!) My memory of that film was simply the last scene with the watermelon chasing the people up Lombard Street. (That scene involves the same technique we used in my own "Silly Backward Antics" video.) The music is by Stephen Foster and Steve Reich who has gone on to become an influential composer. Thank you, YouTube, for letting me relive that film.

The other Robert Nelson film Walter showed us was "Hot Leatherette." I seem to recall its big scene was a loop of a pickup rolling down a cliff. Over and over and over. If anyone can point me to a video of this film I'd be forever grateful.

For your convenience, here is "Oh Dem Watermelons" (but if you're interested in seeing it you've probably already watched it when you clicked on the link above):


There are a few other films I remember from the Tech Weathermen Film Festivals. One was "Tale of a Tailgate." This was a safety film from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (I think it was still called that then). It taught us that we need to aware that equipment can malfunction and we should always prepare for the worst. We got to see someone operating the hydraulics that lift a truck's liftgate. In the film something goes horribly wrong and the lift falls and lands on the operator's foot. That's bad. He should have stood more to the side so that such a malfunction wouldn't result in tragedy. We got to see the failure from several different angles and in slow motion. Gripping!

The movie that still gives me nightmares was one where I was in charge of running the projector. Some of the films were 16mm. Those were shown with projectors in the theater's projection booth. Some were 8mm films. We set up projectors in the middle of the theater for those. I got to run the 8mm projector for one of the pornographic films. The film featured a woman being man's best friend's best friend. And we're not talking just in the style of South Park's "Red Rocket" episode. No, she really put her teeth into her role. Well, maybe not her teeth but something quite close.

The film broke before the climax of the movie. There were boos. I don't know how a stoned person sitting in the dark could thread the film through the projector and get it going again while being booed but I managed. It broke again. Again, I managed to get it going, boos and all. After it broke a third time we gave up on that film. I am so glad I didn't have to see the end of that one.

I wish I had a better memory. I'd like to remember what other movies I got to see in these little festivals (except for those that give me nightmares).

I'm glad I had enough of a recollection of Robert Nelson's movies to search for them after YouTube came along. Now if only someone would post "Hot Leatherette."

By the way, I am a member of the Weather Underground these days! My home weather station uploads its data to their site and they let the world know what the weather is at my house. You might have noticed their weather widget at the top left corner of this blog.