Here is a man who has taken us through the universe by squeezing oil paints out of tubes and creating vistas that showed the rest of us what the universe looked like.
Greg and Tom interview Doug Stewart, Ron Miller and Melvin Schuetz about the Documentary Chesley Bonestell – A Brush with the Future
In this episode Greg and Tom talk with the Producer, Writer and Director of Chesley Bonestell: A Brush with the Future along with his Co-Producers Ron Miller and Melvin Schuetz
We talk to the three of them about who was Chesley Bonestell and what prompted them to make the film. We learn some interesting facts about Chesley’s influential paintings and talk about the paintings and books he illustrated. Chesley was the artist that brought to life the images of the space program using the concepts of Wernher von Braun’s vision of life amongst the planets
The creation of Chesley Bonestell: A Brush With The Future was guided by two Bonestell experts – Ron Miller and Melvin Schuetz – and the film includes the perspectives of over twenty individuals who either knew Mr. Bonestell or were influenced by his work.
“I didn’t know what other worlds looked like until I saw Bonestell’s paintings of the solar system.”
– Carl Sagan
Chesley Bonestell: A Brush With The Future compellingly reveals a nearly-forgotten artist whose mysterious, almost magical, ability to envision distant worlds inspired generations to reach for the stars. Often compared to a twentieth-century da Vinci, this first-ever film about Bonestell explores the life and works of an artist whose influence and timeless imagery are regarded by many as unparalleled. This documentary was produced by award-winning filmmaker Douglass M. Stewart, Jr. and Co-Produced by Ron Miller, co-author of the Hugo Award-winning book, The Art of Chesley Bonestell, and Melvin Schuetz, author of A Chesley Bonestell Space Art Chronology.
Watch the trailer for the film
Bonestell has been called “The Father of Space Art” but his career also included working on many historic projects like the Chrysler Building and the Golden Gate Bridge. He also worked in Hollywood as a special effects matte painter for films like Citizen Kane, Destination Moon and The War of the Worlds. A series of his paintings of the planets in our solar system, published in 1944 in Life magazine ignited a desire in the American public to explore the Final Frontier of Space. Chesley took complicated technical drawings and turned them into breath-taking images that people could admire and understand. His best-selling book written with Willy Ley called “The Conquest of Space,” laid the cornerstone for our space program. When he and Ley teamed up with Werher von Braun, our journey to the moon, planets and stars became a reality. Bonestell’s most famous work is “Saturn As Seen from Titan,” which has been called “the painting that launched a thousand careers” for inspiring so many people to become a part of our space program.
Chesley Bonestell: A Brush With The Future was given an Audience Award at the 2018 Newport Beach Film Festival, was named Best Documentary at Comic-Con in San Diego in 2018 and was honored as Best Documentary at the 2019 Boston Science Fiction Film Festival. Articles about the film have appeared in publications like Sky & Telescope magazine, the National Space Society’s Ad Astra magazine, and earlier this year there was a cover story in Filmfax magazine.
Podcast music:
ending music Kamihamiha! – Alien Warfare Stems by Kamihamiha (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/Kamihamiha/60882
Intro music
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Podcast ©2021 King Dyro Productions
