Jim Hoekema — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:58:07 GMT

It’s nice to see this appreciation of the Eameses and Powers of Ten. At the beginning of my career, I was fortunate enough to work there while the revised film was being made. In fact, I contributed one line to the script (“Out here, emptiness is normal”). As Lucia (Charles’ daughter from his first marriage) observes, the film is a model that can be informative in multiple ways: is it a film that uses the universe to tell about numbers? Or a film that uses numbers to tell about the universe? (Obviously, both.) While the 1977 version is more polished, I find Phil Morrison’s agitated volice-over less satisfying than Judith Bronowski’s “robot stewardess” delivery (as Paul Schrader called it) in the 1968 “Rough Sketch.”
Working there, by the way, was just fabulous—I would have stayed forever, but Charles died while I was there, and after a year of struggle to make it work without him, Ray closed up shop. After cataloging everything and transferring the materials to the Library of Congress, Ray died ten years to the day after her husband.

Adam Greenfield — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:46 GMT

Thanks, Erin, for this loving dissection of what has always been a touchstone for me, ever since PBS burned it into my brain at the tender age of nine. Seeing it never fails to send me off into the characteristically-slackjawed posture of a human being in the throes of abject wonder

I’m so glad you discuss the “Rough Sketch” version, since it’s always been fun for me to contrast it with the final product, and to speculate about why the Eames (“Eameses”? “Eameseses”?) made the decisions they did. Now I have some answers, and I’m grateful.

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