Scene 93 OMITTED

 

Exhibition open: 
18.10.14 – 9.11.14
 

 

SCENE 94 INT RESTAURANT NIGHT 

 

ELLIE comes into the darkened restaurant, following the source of the flickering light. A candle burns at a table in the corner. 

 

JOHN HAMMOND sits at the table, alone. There is a bucket of ice cream in the middle, and he's eating a dish of it, staring down morosely. 

 

Ellie draws up to the table and Hammond looks up at her. His eyes are puffy, his hair is messed up - - for the first time we've seen him, the fire is gone from his eyes.

(Taken from the original script for Jurassic Park)

 

 

Taking this 5 second camera panning as a point of departure 'Scene 93 Omitted' is a review, reconfiguration and reevaluation of the year 1993 as remembered by Wasser, then 5 years old. 

Jurassic Park and its exclusive branding haunt lucid memories of that year: a small neurotic child runs up and down a living room in Jurassic Park PJs spelling out in the air the title credits of the movie accompanied by the humming of the soundtrack; he insists on green jelly for dessert on Sundays because that's what Tim eats in the film; Santa brings a plethora of dinosaur themed toys that Christmas, but anything without the film's trademarked logo on it is rejected as ‘extinct’. [1] 

 

The promise of merchandise is a tactile relationship with a fictional world. In Scene 94 Jurassic Park approaches the edge of self-reflexivity as the camera pans across the gift shop, showing kids' pajamas, lunch boxes and toy dinosaurs all emblazoned with the theme park’s logo. But these branded objects fall short of the slick design characteristic of actual merchandise surrounding a film. The ersatz aura of these things then prefigures, exploits and undermines the possibility of entering Jurassic Park. SCENE 93 OMITTED unearths the problems that these types of material remnants pose for experiences of nostalgia and cultural memory, and exploits the discrepancies between their various appearances.

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[1] In the description box of videoSTORK's YouTube clip JURASSIC PARK & pity for UNSOLD PRODUCTS, videoSTORK describes the camera panning that opens scene 94 of the screenplay: Dr. Ellie Satler (Laura Dern) and John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) debate the psychology of consumption and product seduction. In Jurassic Park, Speilberg's pathos extends to this emotional scene in lamentation of unsold products beginning with a heartbreaking pan across the shelves (93 omitted). The products won't be sold in the fictional story, but luckily for these orphaned t-shirts and sports bottles the consumer guilt worked its movie magic and a mint was made on Jurassic Park merch anyhow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ2OxVzleaE[accessed 22/09/2014]

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