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[THIS IS PART ONE OF FIVE OF CYBERSPACE VANGUARD 1:5.  IF YOUR SITE DID
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Copyright 1993, Cyberspace Vanguard Magazine

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    |                       C Y B E R S P A C E                      |
    |                         V A N G U A R D                        |
    |   News and Views of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Universe   |
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    | [e-mail]     Cyberspace Vanguard@1:157/564  |
    |           PO Box 25704, Garfield Hts., OH   44125 USA          |
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    |  TJ Goldstein, Editor           Sarah Alexander, Administrator |
    |    [e-mail]                    [e-mail]       |
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     Volume 1                August  15, 1993                 Issue 5


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

--!1!--  Ramblings of a Deranged Editor
--!2!--  Mysteries from Beyond the Scifi Channel:  Why
                       DR. FRANKLIN RUEHL Can't Be Abducted By Space Aliens
--!3!--  The Illusion of Falling:  KENNY BATES Makes His Mark On Filmmaking
--!4!--  PETER CUSHING And The Mystery Of The Missing Films:  Trying
                                 To Write A Book About The Master Of Horror
--!5!--  Guesting for the Old Comics Curmudgeon -- Asserting Your
                                                               Independents
--!6!--  Reviews by EVELYN C. LEEPER
--!7!--  SF Calendar: What's Coming Up in the Near Future
--!8!--  All The News That's Fit To Transmit
--!8!--  SPOILERS AHOY/Including Episode Guide For HIGHLANDER Season One
--!9!--  Publications and Conventions
--!10!-- Administrivia
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--!1!--  Ramblings of a Deranged Editor
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     We're baaaaaack ...
     Last issue I rambled on quite a bit, so this time I'm going to make it
short and (hopefully) sweet.
     First, thanks to all the people who wrote in offering help.  I believe
that we finally got back to everyone, so if you haven't heard, we might not
have gotten your letter.  Feel free to write us again.  We've gotten a few
people to do specific subgenres, such as television, books, etc., so what
would be nice now is for people to write in with article ideas,  (A query
about an article idea will definitely get a quicker response.  An article
will most likely be tagged for reading in my "copious spare time" -- and if
you're a regular reader, by now you know what an oxymoron that is.  If
you've queried me first I'll know to look out for it.
     Second ... this issue is going to be short on articles and long on
news.  Because we didn't run much last issue, we found ourselves
backlogged, and a surprising amount of it was still current.  Of the
interviews we are carrying this month, we've got Dr. Franklin Rhuel, the
host, creator, and brains behind the Scifi Channel's MYSTERIES FROM BEYOND
THE OTHER DOMINION.  It's a bit weird, but if you like that sort of thing,
it's worth a look.  Then we've got Kenny Bates, the man who is responsible
for William Shatner falling off a mountain.  And last but not least,
Deborah Del Vecchio and Tom Johnson, authors of PETER CUSHING:  THE
GENTLEMAN OF HORROR AND HIS 91 FILMS.  They give us an interesting
perspective not only on the man himself, but what it's like to try and
track things down in the murky world of films.
     Also, we are thrilled to announce that Hugo nominee Evelyn C. Leeper
has joined our ranks as a reviewer.  If you are on the main networks (or if
you get Lan's Lantern) you've probably seen her stuff already, and know how
lucky we are to have her.  (Rick will probably join her next issue.)
     Also on tap, we've been getting a lot of requests for episode guides,
so this month we're bringing you one of the most frequently requested:
HIGHLANDER.  If there are others that you'd like to see, let us know and
we'll see if we can get them.
     Finally, there's the news.  There was so much of it we had to break it
up into loose categories.  I say loose because the boundaries can get
fuzzy.  If they make a movie out of a William Gibson story, what section do
you put it in?  So we make no guarantees as to the classifications.  Also
included in the news is a ballot for Clarinet's Electronic Science Fiction
Award.  It mirrors the Hugo's, but you don't have to belong to anything in
particular to vote.  You just have to have access to e.mail.  They've
extended the deadline, but you've got to get them out soon.
     So there it is.  Enjoy!
-----------------
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--!2!--  Mysteries from Beyond the Scifi Channel:  Why
                       DR. FRANKLIN RUEHL Can't Be Abducted By Space Aliens
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                       by TJ Goldstein

[MYSTERIES FROM BEYOND THE OTHER DOMINION airs on the Science Fiction
Channel twice on Sundays, 4:30pm and 7:30pm Eastern Time.]

     I'll admit it:  I don't have the Scifi Channel.  But it's not my
fault.  I'm one of those millions who lives in an area where the cable
company, for one reason or another, doesn't carry it.  Of course, I'm not
alone here.  Like millions of other cable viewers, Dr. Franklin Ruehl
doesn't get SFC either.
     There is one difference between us, of course.  I'm just a viewer;
Dr. Ruehl is the creator and host of MYSTERIES FROM BEYOND THE OTHER
DOMINION, SFC's highest rated show.  "I tried.  I called them up and said
'Right here in your city, in Glendale, you have the star of the top new
show on the Scifi Channel.  Why don't you run it?'  A lot of people want
the Scifi Channel, but it's really having trouble making it."  While this
may sound like a sales pitch, he has very little to do with promoting the
actual channel.  "I'd be glad to help them, but they haven't really
enlisted my aid.  I've just done what I could and tried to get on local TV
shows and get coverage for myself and hopefully that will translate into
more people clamoring for it and more systems listening to their
subscribers and finally putting it on."  Right now only 10 percent of cable
networks in the United States are carrying SFC.
     When the tape of the show arrived, I have to say that my first thought
was that it looked like a top of the line public access cable show -- lots
of special effects and computer graphics, but mostly a guy behind a very
small desk.  It seems I was right.  Long before SFC was a gleam in anyone's
eye, Dr. Ruehl was expounding his theories on public access cable.
     "I was originally trying to get on Scifi because I thought that this
would be the ideal venue for my show.  Then I was on DONAHUE in a segment
on public access producers and I met a local representative for the Scifi
Channel.  I thought 'finally!'  Then I spoke to the president out in Boca
Raton Florida, and he wasn't really too enthusiastic.  But they were having
trouble actually getting it off the ground until they sold it to USA
Networks, which actually owns Scifi.  Finally someone that I know at
Universal was working on my show and had an in there, and since Universal
owns USA which owns Scifi, I was able to finally get the show on.  So it
took a long time even to get on this."
     Since 1984, Ruehl has done more than 130 shows, always trying to get
the show nationally syndicated.  Now that he has succeeded, the show has
undergone some changes.  "It's basically the same agenda or content, with
the addition of some pretty spectacular special effects."  (Um ... while I
will say it's better than what you usually find on public access, we are
NOT talking about JURASSIC PARK here, folks.  Not by a long shot.  Not
unless it's the Terry Gilliam version.)  "We also have actors doing re-
enactments of some of the stories, and we have some fantastic visuals,
which I certainly did not have the money for when it was public access."
The picture quality is also much better.
     But missing also are the interviews with science fiction celebrities.
"The set really wasn't built for it.  Besides, there are just too many
delays.  With public access, I could say be here at 2:30 and we'll start
taping at 2:45.  Here it's so unpredictable they could be waiting around 2
or 3 hours and storm out because they weren't put on."
     The show does regularly hit on a few different topics, such as strange
medical cases (like a man who had a face on the back of his head -- and was
eventually driven to suicide by its moaning, which kept him up at night,)
historical oddities (like the fact that the first man killed in the
American Civil War died when a cannon misfired during the surrender
ceremony).  Some have great names like "Strange Droppings from the Sky"
that make you think that he's not quite serious, but he is.
     By far the most coverage, however, goes to UFO's and
extraterrestrials.  How much do they check out the sometimes outlandish
claims?  "As much as we can.  We don't really have a staff to be
able to send out investigators, so we've been covering mostly the classic
UFO cases, which have been studied and investigated and then I put my own
spin on it, giving what I feel are the weak and strong points of each case.
We did have a few instances of phony UFO reports and cases which we showed
at the beginning of the series because we're trying to encourage people to
send in UFO videos.  One was a photograph of a hubcap with a dent in it
that was thrown up in the air.  What I was trying to do was discourage
people from sending in phony cases.  Well, I got virtually nothing as a
result.  People think, well, these guys are going to investigate this
pretty thoroughly, what's the sense of trying to kid them.  I do have some
UFO video that is excellent that we are going to use next season.  It looks
to be an unusual facial formation on a mountain down in San Diego.  It
certainly looks open to interpretation.  We look for things like that.  ...
We're also getting a lot of calls, which I hope to use next season, of
people with ghosts in their basements, UFO's that have landed in their
backyards ... but again, with our staff it is hard to check these things
out of they aren't located locally, so I'm not sure how we're going to
handle that."
     So does he really believe all this?  "You know, a lot of things I'm
very skeptical of myself.  Anybody, just for publicity, and claim that
they've spotted by a UFO, or even been abducted.  And now, the scenarios
have been reported so well that everyone's saying about the same thing.
They were taken aboard a UFO, blood samples were taken, then they went home
and forgot about it, and then they suddenly started to have dreams about
aliens, went under hypnotic regression and remembered that they had been
abducted two weeks ago.  So it's hard to separate the real from the phony.
I am a scientist.  I look at the evidence.  And I have interviewed a number
of people who claim to have been abducted, and I have been present at a
hypnotic regression, and everyone seems to be legitimate.  I know some
psychiatrists who claim that the people really don't want to talk about it.
They are like mugging victims. They feel that they will be ridiculed, and
aren't coming out with books, and for them they retain a quotient of
credibility.  They people I've talked to all sounded sane, and they didn't
sound like publicity hunters.  So I think that there are some good cases
out there, and I think that something might be going on.  Or it might just
be a subconscious memory of a science fiction movie they saw years ago."
     All of this leaves him in an awkward position.  "I've never seen a
UFO.  But if I did see one now, in my position as host of the Scifi
channels greatest show, that I would not be believe and I would have to
decide whether I would even want to report it because it might actually
torpedo my credibility.  So that'd be the dilemma I'd be in.  I couldn't
even report a good sighting if I had one.  I think every UFOlogist, would
like to see and encounter aliens, although I have to say that I would
probably be quite frightened, depending on how non-human they appeared to
be."
     At this point I asked him if he really thought that alien abductions
were on they rise, and if so, why.  I was rewarded with about 20 minutes of
statistics to numerous to go into here, but it boiled down to this:  "I
believe that there is strong evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial
life.  If you look at the statistical evidence, if you look at the
biological evidence, look at the diversification evidence, we are certainly
not alone in this universe.  Given the temperament of the universe and
the fact that it is 20 billion years old, certainly other species have
reached the spacefaring capability.  Some may have dispatched the UFO's in
other directions, and some may have landed here.  Now.  Whether people have
actually seen it or not ... I haven't seen any case that's convinced me
100%.  But as we're talking I wouldn't be surprised if there's an emergency
news flash that a UFO had indeed landed on the White House lawn giving us
concrete proof of the existence of extraterrestrials."
     So why ARE people so interested in UFO's?  "With more movies and more
books coming out about UFO's, I think that more people are also coming
forth with cases.  Now some are obviously phonies who are looking for
publicity.  No doubt about that.  Others legitimately believe that they
have seen something or been an abductee.  but I think certain shows, like
sightings, probably beginning with Star Trek, which is so popular, and of
course now we have Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Trek Deep Space
Nine, and of course the movies, talking about extraterrestrials I think all
of that tends to increase interest in it, and that brings out both the
legitimate and the illegitimate cases.  So I don't think that we're
necessarily having more abductions, but I think that the media is helping
to bring out more of them.  Although we have had, in the past, years when
there were UFO waves, such as 1952, but the fact is the media is bringing
out more of it.  Some people are afraid to speak about their experience
because of the fact that they thought they would be ridiculed.  I don't
think there's as much fear today.  But again, undoubtedly phonies.  It's so
hard to really tell who is telling the truth and who isn't.  You have to
look at the evidence and judge each case individually."
     For my part, I agree with the people who thought the set should be
brighter.  In some respects it's like a scientific equivalent of Whoopi
Goldberg's now-deceased talk show.  It needs something to jump out at you.
I also think that the show would be vastly improved if they rebuilt the set
-- and the production schedule -- to allow for guests.  That, and more
"location" stories, would bring a bit of variety that the show needs.  Dr.
Ruehl throws out a LOT of information, and you need time to recover.
     When you come right down to it, though, the show is Dr. Franklin Ruehl
and that very information.  Probably the strongest thing he's got going for
him is that he DOESN'T try to convince you of anything.  He presents the
evidence, both for and against, and let's you decide for yourself.
     He has an agenda, and he's quite serious about it.  "We present the
scientific evidence for controversial theories and subjects such as those
from UFOlogy, parapsychology, paleontology and cryptozoology as well as
anything else of an unusual and curious nature, with the basic underlying
idea that it is interesting.  Of course, I can make it interesting because
I believe you can take any subject, no matter what it is, and make it
intriguing for your audience."
     When you come right down to it, he's reading for one thing.  "My goal
is to make this show the greatest program in the history of
television with a weekly viewership of 1 billion with a target date for
those goals the year 2015 of not sooner, I say, if not sooner."
     And so, since I promised the good Doctor I'd leave you all with a
little cosmic empowerment, "May the power of the universe be with you!"
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--!3!--  The Illusion of Falling:  KENNY BATES Makes His Mark On Filmmaking
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                       by TJ Goldstein

     My first pro writing job was explaining how the fall at the beginning
of STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER was completely impossible in real life.
(Actually, it was the sudden stop at the bottom that was my problem, but
why split hairs?)  My contention was that anyone who fell off El Capitan
and came to a sudden stop at the bottom would find their insides somewhere
around their eyeballs, whether they hit the ground or not.  What I found
out talking to stuntman turned producer Kenny Bates, however, is that it IS
possible to survive a fall like that.  Sort of.  After all, he's the one
who did the falling.
     "Inverted, I've pulled up to 12 g's.  G's can kill you in the right
conditions, but it's how short of a time you pull those g's and what kind
of condition your body is in.  I've been in a situation where I've popped
blood vessels in my eyes, I've cracked teeth, you're face swells up for a
couple of days ... the reality of it is that you get diarrhea for a couple
of weeks."
     "You're born with two basic fears," he explains, "a fear of loud
noises and a fear of falling.  When you've put yourself in a situation
where you're falling at 100 miles and hour with no airbag and the loud
noise is you screaming all the way down, it's like combining those two.
You're body rejects it.  You have a few nightmares, but you learn to shake
it."
     There are some people who might not shake it, though.  They're the
people who called the ranger station to report that a man had fallen off El
Capitan. William Shatner, who was not only starring as James Kirk, but was
also directing, "liked it so much that they actually changed around the
opening of the picture a little bit to accentuate the shot. So it was very
gratifying."
     Bates cheated, of course.  While he DID fall 450 feet off the
mountain, it certainly wasn't a free-fall experience.  He won the Science
and Technical Academy Award for the design and development of the
Decelerator System, which provides two advantages.  First, it allows a
stuntperson to fall from much higher platforms.
     "To back up a little," Mr. Bates explains,  "just to give you an idea
of how this came to be, if you date back into the early days of motion
picture history, when stuntmen first started doing high falls, they would
do it into water, or they would put up two sawhorses and put planks between
the sawhorses, and they would actually jump, say, 15 or 20 feet onto these
breakaway planks.  These are how high falls basically originated."   As
falls got higher, stuntmen began to use haystacks, nets, and cardboard
boxes.  "I've heard of stuntmen falling up to 10 stories, or 100 feet, into
cardboard boxes.  These boxes were actually set up in a configuration to
break the fall."
     Then came the airbag.  "The highest high fall into an airbag is 311
feet.  That's 31 stories.  Most commonly, though, airbags are used for
doing falls from, oh, 20 feet up to 150.  The most common falls are between
20 feet and 80 feet."  While airbags are great and they're still in use
today, they still leave one problem.
     Shooting down.  With any of these devices, the director must always
shoot from the bottom up to avoid filming whatever it is the stuntman is
going to land on.  What's where the Decelerator's second advantage comes
in.  Since all you've got is a cable attached to the stuntman's ankle, it
doesn't matter what direction you film in.  In the film SLIVER, in fact,
Mr. Bates did a double fall, actually filming from alongside as a woman as
she fell a building.
     But that's only part of Mr. Bates' bag of tricks.  "When we did Die
Hard, I started using a device called a Descender, to do controlled falls.
In other words, we do a controlled fall from I've been anywhere up to 105
stories.  The fall is controlled because your descending on a small cable.
If the film is undercranked, it looks like you're falling."  What Bates has
done is used his knowledge of physics and film to calibrate the speed of
the fall versus the degree to which the film must be undercranked.  "In DIE
HARD, where Alan Rickman dies, falling backwards out of the building, that
would have been a death defying feat.   Instead we came in and packaged an
illusion for Joel Silver.  Since then I've done every one of his films."
He also doubled Bruce Willis when he leapt off the top of the building with
a firehose.
     But Bates doesn't just know about this because of all the jumps he
does.  He is also the head of Alternative Innovations, which routinely
"packages illusions" for films.  "I think of myself as a filmmaker and not
as a stuntman.  The Decelerator system is used in that way."  So what does
that mean?
     "When I come in to do a picture, I come in for the whole picture.
I'll come in through my company, and we'll act as either a consultant or as
a rigging package, and what we'll do is we'll put together, say a dozen
sequences for a film.  In other words, we shoot a lot of things practical
instead of process."  That means what instead of using special effects to
throw somebody off a building, they actually throw somebody off a building.
"Somebody said my company represents the new Hollywood Houdini," he laughs.
"We create illusions on film, whether it's moving vertically or
horizontally like in the film CAPTAIN HOOK or many other films, we create
looks on film that are very very interesting.  As far as action goes, we
are the most advanced equipment in the business.
     There are lots of advantages to using this system as opposed to the
traditional airbags, even for falls that don't break records.  "Using the
Decelerator, you can actually free fall until the last 15 or 20 percent of
the fall. In other words, when you come out of a window, you're in free
fall and there's no restriction of the camera.  When you can shoot from any
angle, there's quite a impressive visual look to it.  In the LAST BOY
SCOUT, I fell about 5 stories and stopped about 3 feet from a spinning
helicopter blade.  For the movie THE FIRST POWER with Lou Diamond Phillips,
I leaped 12 stories to my feet with the Decelerator, pulled a quick release
and took off running.  That was a first.
     "When we do these things, they've become so advanced that we'll come
in beforehand and work with different insurance companies to give them
different specifications on every part of the fall.  We'll give load
distributions, airflow, acceleration, air flow, how many g's we're pulling.
We have a dynamometer gauge to calculate how many pounds we're pulling, so
it's all calibrated as much as possible.  Right now, I'm the only one who's
using it throughout the world.  So you can see there's a little bit of
demand for it.  We stay real busy and even though we do the big stunts and
the big looks, we do little stuff too."
     How big does it get?  "The biggest one was on DEMOLITION MAN where I
doubled Stallone and jumped 23 stories out of a helicopter and stopped
about 6 feet before the roof of a building.  Stallone did part of the
stunt, too.  he put his life in my hands in a dangerous situation that was
another calibrated situation, and he was very good about everything.
Together we got a great sequence on film -- probably one of the greatest
opening action sequences ever on film.  The opening of this picture is
incredibly visual, and it's probably the most money I've ever seen invested
in the opening sequence of a film.  It's incredible.  We had a helicopter
that we flew down from Portland to test with that cost $9,000 an hour.
We're talking millions of dollars just for the opening sequence of this
film. I'm going on an on about it because I get excited when I talk about
it.  As a filmmaker I get excited about the illusions we create on film."
     So what does the Hollywood establishment think of all this?  "There
are people who have been in the business for a hundred years, and some of
them are still using the same flying stage techniques that they used 50, 75
years ago.  We deal with pneumatics.  To give you an example, we're taking
a person and we're flying him 100 feet in the air and he's getting up 40,
50 feet and he's landing on his feet on top of a building somewhere, and
he's looking around and leaping to the ground again all in one cut.  So
it's just phenomenal."
     Although the technology is so new, he doesn't have a problem with
older producers or directors giving him a problem once he's one the set.
"An old filmmaker is one that isn't current.  When you talk about action
films, if you don't know something exists, then you're not going to plan on
using it.  I think it's the people that do more research are the people
that benefit financially."  The financial advantages are twofold.  For one
thing, film time is expensive.  Often what Mr. Bates does in 45 minutes
would take 3 hours to do with traditional methods.  That means that you
have more time to make a shot or a sequence perfect, which itself can be
financially rewarding when the film hits the theaters.  "A lot of directors
want something better than what they put together.  You wouldn't want to
work on a film with Burt Reynolds or Clint Eastwood, or Bruce Willis, or
Stallone or any of those guys and not offer them 100 percent because your
name's on it.  We do all kinds of fims.  I was just associate producer on a
film that was 9 million dollars and we're getting ready to do one that's 80
million.  I don't adjust my price for the project, I just basically base my
fee on what it's worth."
     The paramount concern when doing a stunt like this, of course, is
safety.  Often Bates is asked if he treats the celebrities he works with
differently because of who they are.  "I think it's a lot of responsibility
whether it's Stallone or anybody that works with me, I mean I still take
the same precautions in calibrating any of the equipment or preparing them
safely.  I don't say, well, it's Stallone so we're going to throw two more
ropes on him.  If I don't feel good about it, then I won't hook it up in
the first place.  You have to know the limitations.  You can go overboard
and overboard, you just never want to go underboard.  You want to build in
a good safety factor so you have a good safety margin.  The Occupational
Safety and Health Administration uses something like a four to one margin,
and we try to operate in those parameters or better.  So we have a very
good track record, and we get a lot of different looks.  Believe it or not,
it's the people, and Stallone isn't that crazy about working with heights,
but he's very good about working with people, so he does open up to being
put in a precarious situation even though he's apprehensive.  He does open
up to people when they're able to perform and they know their business.
That's kind of good to know."
     It sounds almost like  cliche, but what he really wants to do is
produce.  "My goal is to produce my own film within the next two years.
I've had a couple of offers and hopefully I can bring something to the
screen that people will appreciate.  I hope have the talent to give the
viewer something that is quite entertaining.  I've already done it on other
people's projects, and I hope I will do it on my own projects, within the
next year and a half, two years."
     When you come right down to it, however, death-defying is still his
stock in trade.  "If I were to count world records I'd probably have 15 or
20, but I don't count world records.  I create illusions.  I'm not in this
to be the toughest guy on the block.  I have a better chance getting
injured driving to and from work then while I'm there."
     Unfortunately, it does happen, and this spring, it did.  Brandon Lee
was killed during the filming of THE CROW when a gun that was supposed to
fire blanks allegedly fired a live round.  So far an investigation has not
settled the question of what actually happened.  "I was affected by the
death of Brandon Lee.  I don't know what the outcome will be.  I worked on
the film but at the time, I wasn't there, so I don't know and I'm sure that
the research will be done.  Whether it was an accident, or negligence or
something else, it's a shame that it happened...  I've lost friends in the
business before.  Dar Robinson was a good friend.  I worked with him for
about 4 years.  The tough thing about this business is that you DO lose
friends.  People do die in this business.  It is a business where you can
get killed.  Not so much as an accident, though it does happen.  You know
there's a possibility, even if it's only one in 10,000.  You know they're
going to do 10,000 stunts in a year. "
     He is currently working on a one hour television special about the
behind the scenes facts of being a stuntperson. Burt Reynolds will produce
and host the show, which will air brand new footage.  It won't be like the
old STUNTMASTERS show, but "it removes the macho mask from the business and
shows the real mechanics of what happens."  William Shatner, Steven Segal,
Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and other stars are scheduled to appear.
     So what goes through his mind as he's sitting on the top of a mountain
(or building, or whatever) getting ready to hurtle off into nothingness
with only a cable between him and the ground?  "Usually I look around and I
say, I don't want to die here.  Then I think why am I saying that?  I don't
want to die anywhere!  Once I get in the air, I'm too busy thinking about
what I'm doing and my movement and making sure I look the way I should look
or turning the way I should turn that I never think of that.  It doesn't
even come into my mind.  All of my anxiety is before the stunt.
     "I want to leave my mark on this earth, and not on the pavement."
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