 |
In the 1960's, however, a
number of productions saw the benefits of replacing costly actors with
balloons tied to a sack. The Animal (pictured opposite) starred nobody
at all. The two people on the poster are just very good drawings on a
balloon.
To save more money, the film was recorded not onto pricey celluloid, but was shown - live - to a community of tribal folk from the jungle, who were shipped to New York and asked to relate the story to any white man who passed them on the street. Payment for this service? Hamburgers and Diet Cola. As a final cost saving measure, only one poster was printed, and not in spendthrift ink, but in the blood of a child who had spilt it playing with a knife. This sadly proved to be a false economy when the child needed a transfusion and his parents asked for the poster so that they could wring it into his mouth.
|
