Comments on: They Are Made Of Meat

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:11:42 +0000

I just watched the YouTube link. Just so you know, somebody did a hack job on it. There are an additional 5 minutes or more in the original. Almost every line from the short story was in the film originally, many punctuated with scenes of human behavior to emphasize the point.

Anyway, I picture the two principal characters being some sort of “remote presence” scout probes, their appearance as human generated by some mechanism. I have to wonder about the smoking aspect… a generous gift to the production from RJ Reynolds or something?

Ben’s theater group at school does a festival of one act plays every year. He has been thinking about trying to present this on stage somehow.

By: Stacey

Stacey — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:08:32 +0000

I enjoyed the story greatly, but the short movie was a bit… odd. If I’d seen it before reading the story, I would’ve possibly bought it, but for an alien who’d researched humans and one who knew nothing about them to both be “disguised” as humans didn’t make sense. I’d imagined it closer to how Bill did. Even pulsing lights would’ve made more sense than 2 aliens in a diner. Points to them for the guy with the men-in-black or news of the weird vibe going on. I liked that aspect. HEck, points to them for making a movie at all!

By: Bill

Bill — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:17:06 +0000

Actually, we watched it via free “video on demand”. I think it was offered by _Showtime_Beyond_. When I first read the sort story here:

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TheyMade.shtml

which doesn’t actually specify a setting, I pictured the conversation taking place between robots in some sort of a computer room like setting… blinking lights, panels with indicators, that kind of stuff. When I thought about it some more, I started thinking abstract. Maybe animated sine waves, dits and dashes, stuff to indicate data exchange. But, as I said above, I like this treatment.

By: Brett

Brett — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:46:23 +0000

I hadn’t seen the actors before, but I thought they did a great job. Was unaware it was on cable before. I saw it recommended by William Gibson on Twitter so I gave it a look.

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:55:19 +0000

Loved this when we (Ben and I) saw it on cable a while back. I had read the short story before I saw it and was surprised by the treatment at first but came around to it on a second viewing. Ben also liked that one of the principal actors is Ben Bailey (the guy who does the “Cash Cab” game show on the Discovery channel).