{"id":17683,"date":"2009-11-27T13:25:22","date_gmt":"2009-11-27T18:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=17683"},"modified":"2015-01-09T17:58:31","modified_gmt":"2015-01-09T22:58:31","slug":"see-chip-delanys-the-orchid-the-way-it-was-intended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2009\/11\/27\/see-chip-delanys-the-orchid-the-way-it-was-intended\/","title":{"rendered":"See Chip Delany&#8217;s <i>The Orchid<\/i> the Way It Was Intended"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/2009\/11\/26\/the-orchid-is-much-more-than-just-berni-wrightsons-junk\/\">Yesterday<\/a>, I told you about the reactions I had to Chip Delany&#8217;s experimental film <i>The Orchid<\/i> when I first saw it at a comic-book convention in the early &#8217;70s, and pointed you to a YouTube version of the film, one that was in less than stellar condition, and chopped into four pieces on YouTube.<\/p>\n<p>If you checked it out, you should consider it a poor advertisement for itself, because I&#8217;ve been alerted by one who should know that the YouTube version is of low quality due to its ancient videocassette source.  You can, however, find a version which has been pristinely restored from the best surviving original print of the film itself as part of the   two-DVD set of the Delany documentary <i>The Polymath, or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>The first disc of the two-DVD set contains the award-winning 80-minute documentary <i>The Polymath<\/i>, which I saw at Readercon, and which is magnificent. You can catch a small clip (including one of its most moving moments)  at the director&#8217;s site <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maestromedia.net\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The second DVD of the set not only has a pristine transfer of <i>The Orchid<\/i>  that&#8217;s far superior to the version posted on YouTube, but over two hours of additional interviews with Chip. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ThePolymathSamuelRDelany.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ThePolymathSamuelRDelany-211x300.jpg\" alt=\"ThePolymathSamuelRDelany\" width=\"211\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-17684\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ThePolymathSamuelRDelany-211x300.jpg 211w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ThePolymathSamuelRDelany.jpg 380w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 211px) 100vw, 211px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nIf you need any further convincing that you need to own this DVD, check out these reviews from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/arts\/reviews\/film\/the_polymath_or_the_life_and_opinions_of_samuel_r_delany_gentleman_taylor\"><i>The New Yorker<\/i><\/a> and  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cinemaqueer.com\/review%20pages%202\/polymath.html\"><i>CinemaQueer<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, director Fred Barney Taylor, though a great documentarian, isn&#8217;t so great at marketing and making it easy for you to order the DVD, as there&#8217;s no BUY ME NOW link on his site. But if you use PayPal to send $35 ($30 for the DVE plus $5 for shipping and handling) straight to Taylor at <a href=\"mailto:fredtaylor@nyc.rr.com\">fredtaylor@nyc.rr.com<\/a> , he&#8217;ll get one out to you ASAP. The process may be convoluted, but I assure you it will be worth it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I told you about the reactions I had to Chip Delany&#8217;s experimental film The Orchid when I first saw it at a comic-book convention in the early &#8217;70s, and pointed you to a YouTube version of the film, one that was in less than stellar condition, and chopped into four pieces on YouTube. If [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[300],"class_list":["post-17683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-samuel-r-delany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17685,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17683\/revisions\/17685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}