Bill Paxton's strange & prophetic post-apocalyptic WWIII film "Taking Tiger Mountain"

"The events depicted in this movie are fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental."

Have you not updated your Studio One yet?

Correct, for a few reasons...

I purchased all my software and licenses outright, and I don't have the money for any upgrades. I also froze my systems at 10.6.8 (they aren't connected to the internet, either) and are built from PC hardware...not real Macs.

The older version of Studio One is still fine for my purposes because I tend to use a different program for a lot of things:

There's an IMDB comment that describes everything well. One thing which is very intriguing is the rather coincidental mention of September 11th...and this was back in 1982 or 1983!


"In a foreseeable future, America has fallen after a nuclear war, and the rest of the world is living under a chaotic, pseudo-Orwellian negligence where violence and anarchy are as commonplace as food riots and outbreaks of diseases such as scarlet fever, typhoid, and leprosy, which have risen due to the filthiness that has become so rampant."

[snip]

"...an incessant torrent of broadcasts announce the utter depravity that the United States is pummeling towards. One announcement declares that in the U.S., cannibalism has become commonplace and that a group of people (who include Shirley MacLaine and Richard Dreyfuss, for whatever reason) have been executed by the Catholic Church (government) on September 11..."

Insert McPiper whoa here.
A different timeline there I'm hoping.

Interesting selection of clips - any plans for them?

I'm sure that you have some very interesting things
to share with us, OP.

I find the set-up with your audio recording also very
interesting....

Unfortunately, for myself at least...I'm completely lost
in trying to see what the point of this really is.

Did Paxton predict his death in one of these audio questions?
Did he predict something about a major event in history
during his lifetime?

I usually am pretty good at reading comprehension and all
of that, but seriously, I am very curious about your topic
and I'd like to know what you have found.

Maybe do a summary for us and explain what this is all about.

Thanks--waiting to see what this is about!


O'sCookie

I know, right?




The piece is maybe halfway finished...the dark and ominous stuff isn't from the film. :)

I probably wasn't too clear originally. It's primarily a dark and foreboding "music" project, focusing on atmosphere and texture.

The movie itself had some elements which seem to hit close to home today. There is some very strange and pointed gender-related material which is the most obvious.

It's not that anything was predicted, per se, it's just a bit weird to see WWIII and gender issues juxtaposed like that over thirty years ago.

Bumpity bump!

I'm inserting the full film here because this was never released on video in any form (and I have no idea how it made it into the digital domain to begin with...it was probably very hard to source this.)


[link to youtube.com (secure)]


Taking Tiger Mountain has one of the most sordid and unbelievable production histories of any film I've seen. Check out these comments:

"A crew of two jailed in Morocco and then relocated to Wales begin production without a script, followed five years later by the sale of their hundreds of hours of footage to a student in his final year of film school for the price of one dollar, the production of Taking Tiger Mountain is both absurd and unbelievable, due in part to the unlikely involvement of William S. Burroughs, whose only feature film writing credit is attached to it."

"This film contains a scene which was edited when the director got banjoed on magic mushrooms, threw short ends of the film up in the air and spliced them together in the order they fell down."




Edit: updated movie link

Last Edited by AkashicRecord® on 07/31/2018 07:57 AM

Another thing that was really on point for today is the mention of race-related issues in the movie. There is a "black army" out of Washington D.C. mentioned, as well as reinstatement of segregation and war among the southern states...and that's just the start of it.

These things appear as radio broadcasts throughout the film. It's somewhat interesting, to say the least.

Nice additions to already black colouring lol

19:11 soft ding - subject goes prone - presumbably for sleep
Subject (dreamstate?) unconcsious on rooftop with vulture curious
1955: soft ding - subject wakes in bed with the following radio announcement
The following items have been added to US ration list for the week of...September 11; sugar, potatoes, soap, aerosols, all perfumes, paint thinner, aluminum foil...
Return to unconscious subject - vulture now eating subject

---

Checking out the film - Super weird it is.

I still need to have a real in-depth viewing, it is a little hard to follow, and is a lot like a haphazard stream of consciousness.

I guess the rumor on the street regarding the rather softcore "porn" scenes was that Paxton propositioned the girls at local bars on the prior nights... "Hey, wanna be in our movie?"

OP if WW3 is coming up, it's good to be "a couple kegs short of a six pack" because that's how to survive.

My best answer is that this will probably end up being a piece that I'll use as an interesting segue between pieces of vinyl in an upcoming DJ mix (that's kind of my thing :)

Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) was originally a Chinese Opera from the 1960s

Then it was the name of a Brian Eno album in 1974

Then this Paxton film in 1983

Now a Chinese blockbuster movie made in 2014

here's an interview with Paxton done in 2015 about TTM:

[link to variety.com]

Quite interesting.

Thanks for posting that, I saw it in passing and totally forgot about it.

This film kicked off a series of events that lead to Paxton meeting James Cameron (in the pre-Terminator days.) The rest was history.


[link to youtu.be (secure)]

Thanks AR for a link to the actual movie. Looks to definitely be an interesting watch! Sometimes the best movies made are those from no budget by no names early in their careers. Starving artists, and all that.

Bill looks SO young...then again, we were all younger back in the '80's.

I can definitely see where you'll get some awesome sound clips from it! Not to mention the foreshadowing of what we have in the world today. Science Fiction has an odd way of foretelling the future in bits and pieces despite missing the broad side of the barn when it comes to some predictions.

Burroughs believed his cut-up method of composition revealed future events. when Huckabee overlaid the Burroughs narrative
on older film footage it also projected into the future. perhaps some of it is yet to come, from present perspective.

I like it.

We might be seeing some more apocalyptic weirdness from this film manifest into our reality...

59 Tomahawk cruise missiles seem to say that it may have just started...

I dug out my guitar synthesizer and guitar / controller for this project. Some might enjoy this clip of it action, because my material from it will be somewhat...different.



Hats off to Wayne Joness.

Keep on with it, OP.

Nice, OP!

for creepy music,i suggest pre 90s horror flicks.maybe in the intros.john williams and danny elfman are both brilliant in their own rights too.the music sets the mood.

I just , actually, shit my pants.