My son, Dustin and his lady friend, Lauren, took me to see Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland for Easter last night and I had a bit of a resurrection.  I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.  I literally did not want to blink for fear of missing something.

Hats off to Mr. Burton and his fabulous international crew for making this picture.  It could be the perfect story told in 3D.  I fell right down the rabbit hole with that little girl and spent 2 delighted hours in Tim’s surrealistic dream.

The experience made me so grateful for my eyes, so grateful for this magical God-endowed gift called sight.  What a trip – to be able to see!  What a concept!  When you really think about it, it’s our most precious gift besides simply being.

To be born blind must be one of life’s saddest tragedies, but to go blind must be even worse because then you know what you’re missing.

But I missed nothing last night.  Instead I had a mind-bending visual feast of perception that I shall not soon forget.

Upon leaving the theater, I remarked to my son, “Well, 3D’s come a long way since I was a little kid.”

In April of 1953 I saw my first groundbreaking feature film in 3-D: Warner Bros. House of Wax, the first 3-D feature with stereophonic sound. (House of Wax was the first time many American audiences heard recorded stereophonic sound.)  Looking back, it was all great news at the time, great fun and really, a silly little gimmick.

Sitting there in a room full of white cheesy cardboard glasses and screaming kids while spears and arrows swooped down upon us was exciting, but in the end result, pretty hollow – though undoubtedly entertaining.

The success of this film proved that major studios now had a method of getting moviegoers back into theaters and away from television sets, which were causing a steady decline in attendance.

I remember that my next 3D adventure was when Universal-International released their first 3-D feature on May 27, 1953, It Came from Outer Space, also with stereophonic sound.  It wasn’t much better except that now flying saucers came whizzing by my head instead of spears.

The big problem for me even as a little kid wasn’t the stupid plots or the bad actors, but the glasses.  There was just little fun in wearing them.  They looked totally stupid and had no degree of high-tech whatsoever.  Though I do remember taking them home with me and saving a pair for many years afterwards.

Others must have agreed with me for soon after, along came Cinerama – look Mom, no glasses!

The first Cinerama film, This Is Cinerama, premiered on 30 September 1952, at The Broadway Theatre in New York. The New York Times judged it to be front-page news. Notables attending included: New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey; violinist Fritz Kreisler; Broadway composer Richard Rodgers; and Hollywood mogul Louis B. Mayer.

Cinerama was presented to the public as a theatrical event, with reserved seating and printed programs, and audience members often dressed in best attire for the evening.

I remember going to the first (and only) Cinerama Theater in St. Louis with my family.  I wore my yellow Sunday blazer, slacks and blue knit tie and of course my cherished white bucks (with bunny bag in pocket – for those of you who remember what a bunny bag was).  You’d have thought we were all going to the prom.

It wasn’t as good as 3D, but it was exciting nonetheless.

Rising costs of making three-camera widescreen films caused Cinerama to stop making such films in their original form shortly after the first release of How the West Was Won. The use of Ultra Panavision 70 for certain scenes (such as the river raft sequence) later printed onto the three Cinerama panels, proved that a more or less satisfactory wide screen image could be photographed without the three cameras. Consequently, Cinerama discontinued the three-film process.

The problem with it all was that there were no great films made with the process; consequently, when the 3D novelty wore off, 3D faded into history.

Today it looks like it’s here to stay.  First of all, the glasses are much cooler – more like black plastic shades – though the design is still a little dorky.  I guess they know if they looked too cool, we wouldn’t turn them back in after the movie.

Also, with the advent of directors like James Cameron and Tim Burton using the technology, we’re finally getting great films with related stories, plots and interesting actors.

So welcome to a new age – the resurrection of 3D entertainment!  Its time has come.  It ain’t perfect yet – there are still way too many moments when I’m aware that I’m looking at levels of panels before me, but then the technology disappears and I’m lost in its wonderland.  Pretty amazing.

What’s even more amazing, however, is that when the movie’s over, we take our glasses off and go back to normal life – in super-stereophonic, totally realistic, 22^nd century 3D.  We live in this stuff!  Every day, every hour, every moment – and we pay almost double to experience it in the movie theater.

A strange lot we are.

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music.