Freebie Film Tip #29: Professor Rogers and the Butter Gun

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Freebie Film Tip #29: Professor Rogers and the Butter Gun

Professor Branestawm

Film buffs, we have saved the best for (almost) the last: Coulomb's Law, directed by Richard Leacock and starring Professor Eric Rogers of Princeton, an epic that will have you on the edge of your seats. You will sit on the edge of your seat, lest you fall asleep.

From archive.org's description of this academic film masterpiece:

'Here, manic Princeton professor Eric Rogers hosts, continually removing and replacing his eyeglasses, ordering around lab assistants – he forcefully breaks a glass test tube in the hands of an assistant to demonstrate the inelasticity of water – and furiously pounds equations on a blackboard (Leacock says the scribblings must have lasted 45 minutes, in what must be one of the more necessary cuts in the history of educational film.) Rogers finally conducts an experiment with a young girl, placing her in a metal cage, which he then charges with electricity, demonstrating through the inverse square law that his assistant (Leacock’s trusting daughter Elspeth) is not harmed by the charge.'

Obviously, a can't-miss formula for attracting audiences. The stunt work alone will astonish you. Somehow, I am reminded of my days in chemistry class: Prof Cohen, with his socks and sandals, and the chalk on the hem of his coat, and Prof Levine, who drew on a transparent projector while droning on in exactly the same tone of voice as that used by Marvin the Paranoid Android. . .

Prof Rogers obviously thinks that what physics gained in him, the Royal Shakespeare Company lost. Notice his posture at the very beginning of the film. He's quite the swashbuckler. The chalk-talk with the butter-and-toast analogy is breathtakingly simple. Star Trek writers, take note. And he doesn't say 'some sort of. . . ' once.

I would like to nominate this film to the Academy for an award for 'best hair-dressing'. Mrs Rogers must have outdone herself that morning, for one thing, on the partially-bald prof. And then there's 'hair-dressing by Van der Graaf' on the lovely (and brave!) young assistant.

This film has everything – excitement, adventure, really wild things. Oh, and humour. There's humour in there. This guy and his assistant are as funny as those scientists on 'The Muppet Show'.

In short, three cheers for the Academic Film Archive of North America. They'll educate us yet.

Two sketched topological shapes.
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