Cars And Roadtrip

Three long time friends hit the road and I babble about movies that don't exist...

Yes, double feature this time.

Let me tell you about my two favorite edits ever. One of them is a lie and the other one doesn't exist.

Spoilers for Brother Bear and Hugo.

In 2003 Disney released what was my favorite movie of my childhood. Brother Bear was a movie about a young man called Kenai that after a terrible mistake is turned into a bear so he could learn the true meaning of brotherhood and family by taking care of a small bear cub called Koda. I saw it on vhs like 50 times, I knew all the songs in english and spanish and could recite parts of it. I even liked the sequel.

The funny thing I had in mind wasn’t in the movie but in the trailer. It starts with a piece of narration done by Denahi, one of the characters, that is featured in the beginning of the movie. Accompanied with shots of the movie that refer to what’s being said. “The world is full of magic. Winter turns to spring” And then the edit I’m referring to happens. “Small things become big” and this is paired with a shot of Koda, the bear cub, running to the right of the screen, entering a forest and disappearing behind a bush as Denahi says “Small Things” and after a quick fade, the next scene beginnings with Kenai as a grown up bear moving to the left while coming from a sort of similar background. The way this couple of shots are edited seems to imply, maybe or maybe not by accident, that this is the same character going into the woods as a cub and coming out years later as a grown up. Intentionally or not I happen to find it as a very interesting editing trick as I happen to know very well that those are not the same character.

The second is something of a you had to be there moment. During one holiday some years ago I was watching movies on tv with my family. My mom was busy in the kitchen. Then 2011's Hugo, which is a movie I really like, began. My mom sat with us and started watching the movie shortly after the intro of the film ended and the title appeared.

Later, right after the scene that showed Hugo's "Origin story" ended we see him walking across the train station he lives in, still a piece of bread and walking towards a multitude to disappear.

Right after that we saw the character of the inspector walking down some stairs, and my mother then asked us. "That's him as a grown up Right?" And we had to explain to her that no, he was in fact a character that had already appeared before she started watching the movie. But that idea stuck with me. By that point, if we were to take part of the intro of the film when the inspector appears. It would only take some twitches here and there to make that edit actually suggest that they both were the same character.

Of course that would be a completely different film. A completely different story. About a kid who lost his father in a fire and was then forced to live behind the clocks of the Parisian train station with his drunken uncle who later died as well forcing him to steal in order to eat, and then later had his notebook stolen preventing him from repairing the last memory he had from his father. Who grew up to become a handicapped and bitter officer of the law who tries desperately to express his love for a woman but is not able.

I don't know. I think I'd watch that movie as well. There's some holes the hypothetical movie would have to fill later. Maybe through flashbacks, but still. This edit would tell so much with so little. If it existed.

And believe me or not, but I actually think pretty often about these edits. And on more than one occasion I've tried to summon it through my illustrations.

Here are a few examples:

https://twitter.com/Katnay3/status/1504193536350208003

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/38772624/

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/25146209/

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/33546596/

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/33307229/

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/33478413/

And that's the case of these pieces today.

Of course it looks way simpler than what I made it sound with all of this writing. But that's the point.

We see on one hand three friends in their childhood and on the other hand we find where they are many years later. Still together due their love for cars.

So meet Pearl, the swallow, who in both of these pictures is accompanied by her best friend ever Jon the lion, and her soon to be husband Rob the wolf. The three of them always dreamt of going on a road trip as shortly after Pearl and Rob got engaged they decided the time had come.

The names are not the definitive ones, I may change them if I think of some better ones.

Some stuff I can write about the first picture is that at first I didn't really know why I decided to have the background be a construction site. But after some time thinking about it I realized that maybe it was because in a lot of pictures of me and my cousins as kids the houses of our parents are being built. The zone where we live used to be empty in the 80's. And of course I do have some memories of playing in the dirt under what back then was an abandoned construction site before the government decided to retake the project and finish the hospital in the mid 2000s

The character of Jon here is inspired by one time a saw a thread of trans people and their families recreating old family pictures from their childhoods Which conceptually was a great addition to the edits I often think about. I mean that's such a profound story of development told with only two pictures.

And lastly the background of the second picture is inspired by a section of the Tláhuac-Chalco highway that runs across a lake that has an electric pole half sunk on the water a couple of meters from land. It's only one like that and it is still connected to the rest so it seems it still works. Every time I see it I wonder what's the story behind that. Was it built there? Did it move? How? It doesn't really matter. I just think the image of that pole poking out of the water goes incredibly hard.

Just here I'll be posting these like this. The plan, even though it has been maybe a little too long, has always been to post these apart with weeks or months of difference. See if someone makes the connection. I think that could be fun.