Cyclone Trooper
Last night's dream was mainly about a movie. I think the movie's name was "Cyclone Trooper"; I'm pretty sure about the "cyclone" part, and I think the second word began with a "T", but I'm only semi-sure that it was "trooper". It doesn't matter, because the film's title had nothing to do with its subject matter.
At first, the dream dealt with how all my friends were watching or trying to watch this movie, but they gave up because it was such a boring movie. I hear a few friends talk about it at first, then I walk into a room as one friend is watching the opening of the movie and ask, "Is this 'Burnt Offerings'?" Because it sort of resembled it in a way; it definitely looked like it was made in the '70s, and like a lot of '70s horror movies, it opened with someone driving a long ways through the country. However, the big difference between "Cyclone Troopers" and "Burnt Offerings" was that it's not scenes of a car in the country, but of a horse-drawn buggy, with a man and a woman dressed sort of Amish, sort of 17th-century pilgrim.
As it turns out, the film is set in a parallel universe where "17th century witches in the American colonies were really a breakaway Christian sect that believed God granted powers like healing to believers, and after the Revolution, the witches and the U. S. fought a war... and the witches won." I put that in quotes, because although this information was revealed to me in the dream, the movie didn't seem to follow all those points. Sure, the woman had healing powers, and it turns out these witches were traveling to California at the request of a millionaire with a terminally-ill daughter who had given up on modern medicine. But since these witches lived in some kind of isolated Amish-like community, and the rest of the world looked pretty much the way it should in the '70s, and the United States certainly didn't seem to be controlled by Amish witches, it seems kind of odd that their religious sect was supposed to have "won" a war.
When I actually try to watch the movie in my dream, it does seem kind of boring, mostly because there are a lot of scenes with characters brooding or speaking in very short sentences, and occasionally throwing something or getting in a fight, but without any reason behind the events. In the dream, I find out that the movie was based on a novel, and the novel actually is mostly about the character's internal struggles -- something about the man-witch feeling inadequate because God only gifted his wife with powers, and the millionaire's family feeling conflicted about having witches in their home -- but in the movie, we don't see the character's thought processes or inner conflicts; we just see actions that could be explained by those inner conflicts, but stripped of all motivation. The novel didn't translate well to film, in other words.
Of course, I think there were several '70s films that were bad films, for exactly the same reason. So this wasn't a huge revelation.
I didn't finish watching the movie in my dream, either. Instead, I get side-tracked when a friend asks about a pile of self-help/motivational books with me listed as the author. They were sort of like "How to Win Friends and Influence People", or a similar series of books. Something famous. I had to explain that it was all a mistake; I once wrote to the real author of the books, via his publisher, and the next thing I knew, the next edition of the book was published under my name instead of the real author's name, and even further books in the series were published in my name. I kept writing to the publisher, trying to explain that I was not the author of those books, but that there must have been a mistake. Somehow, they were just skimming the letters I sent, saw my name and the name of the books, and assumed I must be the author.
The best part about this was that, since this was the last part of my dream, there was a half-awake stage where I was trying to remember if the part about writing to a publisher and accidentally being made the author of a famous motivational book had actually happened or not.
I haven't done a search on Amazon yet.
At first, the dream dealt with how all my friends were watching or trying to watch this movie, but they gave up because it was such a boring movie. I hear a few friends talk about it at first, then I walk into a room as one friend is watching the opening of the movie and ask, "Is this 'Burnt Offerings'?" Because it sort of resembled it in a way; it definitely looked like it was made in the '70s, and like a lot of '70s horror movies, it opened with someone driving a long ways through the country. However, the big difference between "Cyclone Troopers" and "Burnt Offerings" was that it's not scenes of a car in the country, but of a horse-drawn buggy, with a man and a woman dressed sort of Amish, sort of 17th-century pilgrim.
As it turns out, the film is set in a parallel universe where "17th century witches in the American colonies were really a breakaway Christian sect that believed God granted powers like healing to believers, and after the Revolution, the witches and the U. S. fought a war... and the witches won." I put that in quotes, because although this information was revealed to me in the dream, the movie didn't seem to follow all those points. Sure, the woman had healing powers, and it turns out these witches were traveling to California at the request of a millionaire with a terminally-ill daughter who had given up on modern medicine. But since these witches lived in some kind of isolated Amish-like community, and the rest of the world looked pretty much the way it should in the '70s, and the United States certainly didn't seem to be controlled by Amish witches, it seems kind of odd that their religious sect was supposed to have "won" a war.
When I actually try to watch the movie in my dream, it does seem kind of boring, mostly because there are a lot of scenes with characters brooding or speaking in very short sentences, and occasionally throwing something or getting in a fight, but without any reason behind the events. In the dream, I find out that the movie was based on a novel, and the novel actually is mostly about the character's internal struggles -- something about the man-witch feeling inadequate because God only gifted his wife with powers, and the millionaire's family feeling conflicted about having witches in their home -- but in the movie, we don't see the character's thought processes or inner conflicts; we just see actions that could be explained by those inner conflicts, but stripped of all motivation. The novel didn't translate well to film, in other words.
Of course, I think there were several '70s films that were bad films, for exactly the same reason. So this wasn't a huge revelation.
I didn't finish watching the movie in my dream, either. Instead, I get side-tracked when a friend asks about a pile of self-help/motivational books with me listed as the author. They were sort of like "How to Win Friends and Influence People", or a similar series of books. Something famous. I had to explain that it was all a mistake; I once wrote to the real author of the books, via his publisher, and the next thing I knew, the next edition of the book was published under my name instead of the real author's name, and even further books in the series were published in my name. I kept writing to the publisher, trying to explain that I was not the author of those books, but that there must have been a mistake. Somehow, they were just skimming the letters I sent, saw my name and the name of the books, and assumed I must be the author.
The best part about this was that, since this was the last part of my dream, there was a half-awake stage where I was trying to remember if the part about writing to a publisher and accidentally being made the author of a famous motivational book had actually happened or not.
I haven't done a search on Amazon yet.