If you think cinema is just audiovisual entertainment, hold onto your popcorn folks, because today we're diving into an aromatic abyss of olfactory oddity when Hollywood engaged in the battle of the smellies. This isn't just a whiff of the absurd, but an honest-to-goodness tale of when Hollywood tried to tickle our nostrils along with our imagination. So did cinematic innovation cut the mustard or was it all just passing wind?
Imagine going on a date to the cinemas, delighting your senses with panoramic views of Spain and then suddenly getting hit by a waft of, is that shoe polish? Welcome to "Holiday in Spain," a 1959 film that painted a whole new 'scent-scape' in the world of cinema. The film successfully broke the fourth wall, or should we say, the nose wall, by incorporating smell into the cinematic experience. It marked the introduction of Smell-O-Vision, a technology that promised an olfactory rollercoaster ride to audiences.
The idea behind Smell-O-Vision was as audacious as it sounds. It aimed to titillate your smell buds (that's a thing, right?), offering a multi-sensory cinematic experience, basically treating your nose to a buffet of fragrances. But like many audacious ideas, it was easier said than done. Audiences expecting to be immersed in an aromatic plot found themselves amidst a mix of mistimed scents and a bouquet of confusion.
But Smell-O-Vision wasn’t the only stinky boy in town. In a plot twist that could only happen in the '50s, Smell-O-Vision found itself nose-to-nose with its competitor, Aromarama. The late 1950s witnessed a stank-off between these technologies, each promising a sensory experience that would make your nose twitch. The fragrant face-off left audiences bemused, amused, and more than a little bit congested.
Despite promising a revolutionary cinema experience, Smell-O-Vision didn't quite pass the smell test. "Holiday In Spain," the first Smell-O-Vision film, became a testament to the technology's flaws rather than its potential, ultimately evaporating from theatres as quickly as the scents it pioneered. Nevertheless, the idea of scent-enhanced cinema continued to tease the industry, making occasional cameos in films like "Polyester," which used a ‘scratch-and-sniff’ gimmick known as Odorama.
Despite the smell-tacular failure of Smell-O-Vision, the dream of a multi-sensory cinema hasn't entirely vanished. From the whiff of an ambitious 'iSmell' concept in the 1990s to the 'smelling screen' of 2013, olfactory cinema continues to be a holy grail for some brave souls. But as we stand on the precipice of this aromatic abyss, one thing is clear - the journey to successfully integrate smell with cinema is proving to be one tough cookie to sniff out. And so, while we might not yet be able to smell our way through a film, we can at least tip our hats to Smell-O-Vision for the nostril novelty it brought to the cinematic table.
Would you really want to smell everything you see on screen? Perhaps buttery popcorn and your date’s alluring aroma are more than enough to delight your senses.
SOURCES:
-
0:00:00 - Will: So I've wanted for forever to have total immersion in my viewing experience. You know, I like getting the super clear picture. I like getting as many pixels as I can have. I like the surround sound where the movies are tickling my earballs. They're coming in.
0:00:19 - Rod: You want more tickling than that? You're not fooling anyone. Get to what you really mean. You want a grope suit?
0:00:25 - Will: I'm building up. I'm building up here. So my eyes are getting done by this. My ears are getting done. I wouldn't mind the movies where they've got the jiggling seats. You come in there and you got the seats jiggling for you whenever a big thing happens. But, you know, Rod, the high point of this is, of course you need to smell the movies.
0:00:51 - Rod: Yeah. It's not a story without an odor. I agree with you. If there's no odor, there's no story. From a movie review by Glenn Erickson on DVD savant And I'm sure you know the science DVD
0:01:12 - Will: Like I am. I'm Rain Man of DVDs. Yeah, like I know all of the DVDs.
0:01:18 - Rod: It's a strange 1959 Holiday in Spain is not an ordinary film experience, as with Michael Todd's Around the World in 80 Days. Michael Todd will come back into this story later.
0:01:30 - Will: Okay.
0:01:31 - Rod: The show is a giant screen travelogue with an adventure storyline.
0:01:34 - Will: Cool. I like that.
0:01:36 - Rod: I'm quoting pretty much directly from this one. So if the words sound unusual, it's because they're not mine. They sound differently unusual to mine.
0:01:42 - Will: Okay, fair enough.
0:01:43 - Rod: The wisely chosen director is the camera genius Jack Cardiff, who at all times keeps the screen active and the angles interesting.
0:01:52 - Will: Know. When you're doing a movie review, I want to know, like, first off, good story or not? Is it a cracking story? Did the actors do well but camera angles.
0:02:00 - Rod: straight into it?
0:02:02 - Will: It's not my first thing.
0:02:03 - Rod: A nice keeps the camera I want to know about editing first.
0:02:06 - Will: Is the camera moving?
0:02:08 - Rod: The story is slight, and the characterisation is almost nil.
0:02:12 - Will: Okay, so there you go. We got to those. Fair enough.
0:02:15 - Rod: We got there. The story is semi comic, almost casual chase like thriller. On holiday. In Spain, adventure seeking Britain Oliver Larka becomes aware of a death threat to one Sally Kennedy. He tries to protect her while various sinister agents circle about them. Baron Satterdin. Oh, carry on. Yeah.
0:02:34 - Will: Baron Satterdin. That is classic. Classic. Good name for a baddie,
0:02:38 - Rod: The long moustache kind of thing. And his cohort. So there's a cohort? I think he means consort. But anyway, baron Saradin and his consort or cohort Margarita, put Oliver onto the wrong path. Drunken Irishman. Johnny gin.
0:02:52 - Will: Johnny Gin. Stop it.
0:02:55 - Rod: Serving as Sancho Panzer to Oliver's, Don Quixote is smiley, a taxi driver willing to do most anything as long as the meter is running. Beverly denies being in danger until both Oliver and American Robert Fleming come to her rescue at the same time.
0:03:10 - Rod: That's awkward. I'm here to rescue her. No, I am.
0:03:12 - Will: Double damsel in distress or double distress damsel?
0:03:16 - Rod: Single distress damsel. Double helper, dudes.
0:03:18 - Will: Yeah. Okay.
0:03:20 - Rod: Fleming brings proof that Beverly will soon inherit a large fortune. Knowing that the greedy Tommy has only a few hours to eliminate Beverly, robert and Oliver flip a coin to see which one of them will watch the bad guys and which one will flee with the, quote, mystery target. Okay, confused yet?
0:03:39 - Will: A little bit. It still doesn't feel like a slight plot. It feels like maybe even too many things are going anyway.
0:03:45 - Rod: Holiday in Spain is fairly diverting for a film that really exists to put pretty scenery on a giant screen. The story frequently steps aside to make way for the 70 millimeter eye candy. So that technology 70 mil film was a bigger deal. It was good.
0:03:59 - Will: It was at the time, in the DVD era, pre DVD
0:04:01 - Rod: Well, this is 1959, but for some reason, Glenn has a particularly detailed review. There are many reviews of this movie, by the way. Okay, so what have we got? We got the eye candy. So the eye candy, for example, aerial views of storybook castles, points of view of cars racing through the street, barrels rolling down alleys, and our heroes climbing on rooftops.
0:04:21 - Will: That's cool. That's cool. Yeah, I like the barrels rolling down alleys.
0:04:25 - Rod: Apparently, it looks very cool.
0:04:26 - Will: Not enough of that in movies. And I'd be scared if I was in that alley. And a barrel.
0:04:30 - Rod: Barrel rolling. It depends how big the barrel is. Five liter barrel.
0:04:34 - Will: Yeah, I can hand that could still hurt your shins. You can jump over full of beer.
0:04:38 - Rod: They're not very big.
0:04:39 - Will: Still, I don't want to hitting there. And it can get up a fair bit of speed.
0:04:42 - Rod: What if I'm looking the other way?
0:04:43 - Will: What if the first out of a lot what if the whole pub at the top has tipped out all of their barrels? And you've got to I don't like that.
0:04:50 - Rod: That scares me more. Now I can't sleep. The filmmakers seem to have located every vertiginous location in Spain. Apartments, hotels, castles, and even gardens are always right next to tall cliffs, usually with no guardrail. I hate that. The most fantastic location is an impossible looking gorge where stone catwalks hug tall cliffs and a train line traverses tunnels carved straight through a mountain.
0:05:18 - Will: That's cool. Again, no guardrail.
0:05:20 - Rod: No guard? No, they're Spanish. They're too tough for that. So it sounds visually awesome, particularly for the day. Holiday in Spain has perhaps the most convoluted special format and process backstory of any film ever made. Oh, okay. It showcased the fun bits of some noteworthy newer tech, like 70 mil format. It apparently had a proprietary eight track sound system, and all the other 70 mils before then only had six.
0:05:46 - Rod: Wow.
0:05:47 - Will: What's the difference? So you can have two tracks, extra tubers or something like that?
0:05:50 - Rod: Yeah, more tuber. All Spanish movies need more tuba. It also premiered with a different name, not Holiday in Spain, but Scent of Mystery, and its original ads featured the slug light. First they moved 1895, then they talked 1927. Now they smell. So in the history of movie tech, smell as a technology, as such, preceded sound. No.
0:06:18 - Will: What?
0:06:18 - Rod: Yeah. So the first talking movie picture was a full little snippets, and things were.
0:06:24 - Will: In Paris around 1900 sorry, talking movie in 1900.
0:06:28 - Rod: Film or short things with sound. But the sound wasn't on the film, and it was a little bit oh.
0:06:32 - Will: So they played it a sort of separate way, like a gramophone at the same time or something.
0:06:36 - Rod: Okay. The first feature film with fully synced talkie action was in 1927. It was called The Jazz Singer, featuring Al Jolson in a not at all racist portrayal of black people.
0:06:47 - Will: It's really tough to do the history of these things, where you get these innovations, you go, this is cool, but why did you use it for that? Why was that the first thing?
0:06:55 - Rod: I don't know why, but Al Jolson was, I think, the first guy to do that whole sort of black and white minstrel gig.
0:07:00 - Will: I don't know if he was maybe in movies, but I believe the black and white minstrels had a much older history than that.
0:07:06 - Rod: I think you're right. The earliest reference I could see to smells in movie theaters was in, like, 1868.
0:07:13 - Will: There aren't movie theaters in 1868.
0:07:16 - Rod: Yeah, kind of were. So this is what, the Alhambra Theater of Variety in London. So the rimmel scent, which I think is just perfume or something, was sprayed into the room during the magic dance of the fairy acorn tree.
0:07:29 - Will: That's nice.
0:07:31 - Rod: So that was 1860, 819, 16. There's a theater in Pennsylvania, they dipped cotton wool into rose oil and they put in front of a fan during a newsreel about the Rose Bowl game. Let's be clear, rose bowl nothing to do with roses. It's football, I believe.
0:07:45 - Will: Yeah, but maybe I think there's a whole bunch of bowls in America, like the Rose Bowl and the Lemon Bowl and the something, and that's like the local championship. And so if your state's biggest agriculture was roses or something like that
0:08:00 - Rod: I think you're reading a lot more literal.
0:08:02 - Will: No, but there could be roses associated.
0:08:03 - Rod: With there could be. There could be. That's true.
0:08:05 - Will: Wow. Though, here's the scent of roses to make you think of rose. I get doing the scent thing, but that's tenuous.
0:08:11 - Rod: It is.
0:08:12 - Will: So that was news.
0:08:13 - Rod: Very hard to argue. 1929, Boston theater put lilac oil in the ventilating system to get audiences in the mood for a love story set during World War I called Lilac Time. I mean, really? You're like, we're going to watch a love story from World War I.
0:08:28 - Will: Nice.
0:08:29 - Rod: Smells like flowers, 1943. So I love that. The quote from the source. I got this was hollywood tried compressed air to force various artificial scents through air conditioning systems, as in the 43 A Theater or early 40s. In 43 a theater in Detroit showed a movie called The Seahawk, which was a swashbuckling film starring, of course, errol flyn.
0:08:50 - Will: Pirate smell.
0:08:51 - Rod: Yeah.
0:08:52 - Will: You get pirate smell.
0:08:53 - Rod: Yeah. The smells I included was things like tar from a sailing ship to add to the ambience tar and pitch.
0:08:59 - Will: I want to smell like whale blubber. And the salt air.
0:09:03 - Rod: I want to smell moby tar. There's another one called Boomtown, also in 1943. It was a drama which each character was given a distinctive smell. So Clark Gable was tobacco, Spencer Tracy was pine, and Hetty Lamar was the perfume, My Sin.
0:09:20 - Will: So, what, they'd spray these when these actors came in?
0:09:22 - Rod: Yeah. Instead of having your own theme song. Not like Darth Vader.
0:09:26 - Will: Cool.
0:09:27 - Rod: I got a waft instead. Problem with the early smellies, though. Problem was there are a few problems. One of them, clouds of perfume would accumulate in theaters, so smells would pile up. So you had sequences of smells. So Clark would come on, and you'd get tobacco. And then as the tobacco is just getting into your schnalz, you get a waft of Spencer's Tracy's pine. And then My Sin would come in as Hetty Lamar.
0:09:48 - Will: And then some sachet on screen and some whale blubber.
0:09:51 - Rod: Yeah.
0:09:51 - Will: Oh, God. You walk into a cinema and you're like, what the fuck is going on?
0:09:55 - Rod: Also, we don't process new smells until we've cleared the old ones. That's why perfume places get you to smell coffee or something to kind of snap it. So that was a problem. We get olfactory fatigue, so we just actually kind of stop smelling. Our system goes, I'm not noticing John anymore.
0:10:14 - Will: No, I get it. But what's the point? Once you're in the sewer, there's not a point of continuing to smell like you're in the sewer.
0:10:22 - Rod: Received. It’s gross now.
0:10:23 - Will: Yeah, got it. Got it. Shutting that one off now. Don't need that anymore. No new information required.
0:10:30 - Rod: In 1933, there was an early version of an in theater smell system. It was installed in the Rialto Theater on Broadway, but it would take over an hour to clear the smells from theater, and some smells would linger for days. Also, if you released smells in one part of theater, you needed it to move to the other part. So you either needed to put a lot in it in somewhere so the people nearest get overwhelmed and the people the other end are like, I can't smell shit.
0:10:58 - Rod: And my favorite this came up a lot in different reviews and things paraphrasing artistic integrity and honoring the director's intentions. The smell could detract from what the director really wanted to convey.
0:11:09 - Will: How?
0:11:10 - Rod: Because you'd go, what the fuck is that smell?
0:11:13 - Will: Okay. Yeah. So you're paying attention to the smell, but you put some tar in when the pirates are on the scene. How is that detracting?
0:11:19 - Rod: Well, maybe that's not they wanted you to focus on they wanted to focus on errol, Flyn's, swashbuckle ring.
0:11:24 - Will: Okay. All right.
0:11:25 - Rod: So the smellscape thing in movies wasn't going so well. So what this whole new fledging industry needed was a Swiss guy, Hans Laube.
0:11:35 - Will: Yes.
0:11:36 - Rod: So he was described as a tall, greyhaired man who affected owlishly severe. Dark eyeglasses. owlishly severe. He wore them no, this review said affected.
0:11:46 - Will: He wore them with effect. Yeah, sure. Okay. He's a guy that likes his glasses.
0:11:53 - Rod: But still he does. He's variously called a professor, an advertising executive, an electrical engineer, and an expert in osmology. The science of odors variously is doing a lot of work. There variously called many of these things. So in the late 1930s, somewhere around that, it's just basically the stuff I read said kind of before World War II. So late 1930s, he invented a method for cleaning the air out of large auditoriums, and it was widely used throughout Europe, cleaning the air out. So from there, apparently, he became fascinated with reversing the process. And I'm thinking, that's not hard. You want to make a room smell bad? I know how to do that.
0:12:28 - Rod: So he wanted to put odors of his choosing back into room. So he developed this artificial scent delivery process, which he called Scento Vision.
0:12:35 - Will: You know what I'm going to call it? You put the scent in front of a fan, and it moves.
0:12:42 - Rod: So you're going to call it Fanny scent?
0:12:44 - Will: Yes or no? Probably not.
0:12:48 - Rod: Choose a country.
0:12:48 - Will: But I'm just going to say that it doesn't sound like that much of an invention to move a smell. All you need to do is have a fan.
0:12:56 - Rod: You're begging to be told about the technique, aren't you? Oh, my God.
0:12:59 - Will: Of course I am.
0:13:00 - Rod: It's coming. So he called it sento vision. New York Times reviewed November 1957 a couple of quotes here. There's a few quotes in this because I can't do any better than these people wrote themselves backers of Sento Vision. Hope to interest theaters in permanent installations.
0:13:16 - Will: Fuck. I hope they installations. I really hope they lost a lot of money. Not that I am biased.
0:13:22 - Rod: Why do you hate them?
0:13:24 - Will: I just I hate idiots.
0:13:27 - Rod: How dare you say, he's Swiss. The Swiss are never idiotic. So the review the quote goes on, Mr. Loub's most recent experiments have been with supermarket displays. Slides of various products are accompanied by such odors as orange, lemon, ghoul, ash, the obvious. Next.
0:13:52 - Will: Maybe it was easy to make, but I get orange and I get lemon.
0:13:55 - Rod: Do that. Now, conjure the smell of goulash. Like, it's one smell for stuff.
0:13:58 - Will: Orange and lemon, you're like, okay, orange juice is delicious. Or lemon you can put into. They also smell clean because there's got a citrusy sort of thing.
0:14:05 - Rod: Goulash is not clean. Meat and cream doesn't say fresh as a daisy.
0:14:09 - Will: If you're pushing your shopping trolley around the aisles and you smell orange. You're like, that's all right. And then suddenly you get a big waft of goulash.
0:14:17 - Rod: You're like, oh, there's no way you're going that's goulash. You're going, that's meat and cream and other ingredients. Hot.
0:14:24 - Will: I really think you're thinking something has spilt, like there's a thing on the floor. What have I got to avoid? Preferably on the floor. I want to go back. This is my dream for a time machine, to go back to a time when someone is wafting the smell of goulash through a supermarket.
0:14:40 - Rod: It goes on cheese, banana, smoked ham and chocolate pie. Fuck does chocolate pie smell like? It smells like pie, right?
0:14:48 - Will: It smells like crust and chocolate. Obviously.
0:14:51 - Rod: The inventor also sees a future for synchronized perfume emissions from television sets.
0:14:56 - Will: Yeah.
0:14:57 - Rod: So he sorted out what I'd call the lingering pong problem. You know, where scent A hangs around too long and clashes with scent B. Commercial perfumes contain fixatives.
0:15:06 - Will: Do they?
0:15:07 - Rod: Yeah. And their purpose is to make the smell remain. That's what they do. So he removes the fixatives. So his scents are temporary, and if they don't disappear quickly enough, he has neutralizer sprays. And then the next smell can come in.
0:15:18 - Will: This smells like he's just making shit up. Not just this doesn't smell like actual chemistry.
0:15:24 - Rod: Not making shit up inventing very fine line. So he and a buddy produced a 35 minutes smellodrama Jesus, a movie called Mindrom, which means my dream. And it was shown at the 1940 Worlds Fair in New York. The projectionist would operate a control board with dials so they could release 32 different odors at the right time. But I think it was all individual, so it included roses, coconut, tar, hay, peaches, things like that.
0:15:55 - Will: That's wild.
0:15:56 - Rod: No ghoul ash. Ghoul ash free movie. I don't want to see it says no ghoul ash in it. Fuck you, Star Wars. No, no. Not a hint of ghoul ash. One newspaper said his setup, quote, produced odors as quickly and easily as the soundtrack of a film produced sound.
0:16:12 - Will: Wow, that quickly.
0:16:13 - Rod: But the New York Times came in and said, look. Audiences thought the film simulated bacon aroma didn't really seem real, but the incense was on the mark. That's because you could probably use incense.
0:16:24 - Will: You probably could.
0:16:25 - Rod: So after this, it seems not a lot happened.
0:16:29 - Will: Why?
0:16:30 - Rod: Until Laub’s work caught the attention of, quote, flamboyant Broadway and Hollywood producer Michael Todd. We're talking late fiftys. It also caught the attention of Michael Tod's son, Michael Todd Jr. The Todds were looking at gimmicks to make big Todd. That's what they're going to be. They're going to be Big Tod and Little Tod. Now Big Todd's, quote, outrageous widescreen epic, around the world in 80 days even more spectacular. You gonna be ok?
0:17:01 - Will: I'm good with this.
0:17:03 - Rod: The Todds pondered a few ways to use smell. They went, Nah, fuck it. We don't want him. And the movie did well, anyway. I think I read somewhere it won an Oscar in 1956. Like it around the world in 80 days, if it's the one I'm thinking of. It was hilarious as a child but it might be a different 1956 movie.
0:17:18 - Will: Yeah, sure. It's a good plot. It's a good plot.
0:17:22 - Rod: 1958, Big Tod died in a plane crash. I know.
0:17:27 - Will: With the Big Bopper. That wasn't it in 1950?
0:17:29 - Rod: Yeah. And richie valens and leonard skinned. Also stevie ray vaughan.
0:17:35 - Will: All of them.
0:17:37 - Rod: Shirley Strawn from Skyhook.
0:17:38 - Will: Also, there was one in about, like, 1958 around there.
0:17:41 - Rod: There's a few, yeah. Buddy Holly. Fuck. I can name a lot of people who've died in plane craft and or helicopters. So at this point, Little Tod had produced, quote, no great theatrical or movie successes. But he did inherit two things from Big Todd. One was a shit tin of money and a name. He's got a name and a name. So three things. The second was his father's Ponchom for outrageousness.
0:18:06 - Will: Did he only get that when his dad died? Yes.
0:18:08 - Rod: Before that he was completely bland.
0:18:09 - Will: And then Anody man, you get passed on the personality.
0:18:12 - Rod: It's like you become, Fuck, I feel dynamic. Now Dad's dead. This is fantastic. Also weirdly, he was, for a short time, Elizabeth Taylor's stepson.
0:18:19 - Will: How can you be for a short time? Because his father kept remarrying and she had a fair few marriages, I think. Yeah, fair.
0:18:25 - Rod: And even better, when he was her stepson, he was older than her, so.
0:18:29 - Will: You don't remain her.
0:18:31 - Rod: So of course not once you move on. Anyway, so he signed Laube, our Swiss buddy, to a movie deal which would later on become Scent of Mystery. But it was on the condition that Sento Vision was renamed Smello Vision.
0:18:44 - Will: Yes, good.
0:18:45 - Rod: You got it away.
0:18:46 - Will: There you go. Finally. Finally.
0:18:47 - Rod: Smello Vision. When he was asked in an interview, Why did you not name it? Something more dignified. Little Todd said, I don't understand how you can be dignified about a process that introduces smells into a theater.
0:18:59 - Will: And I don't think he's wrong. Or we're making a movie, not a film.
0:19:03 - Rod: Exactly. For fuck's sake. So they went off to make a Stinky.
0:19:07 - Will: Stinky.
0:19:09 - Rod: That is not a quote.
0:19:10 - Will: I could have gone worse. Smell of Vision is the highbrow in my house.
0:19:14 - Rod: Let's make a pongo bus. Smell of Vision wasn't the only game in town.
0:19:21 - Will: No. Yes.
0:19:24 - Rod: So now we bring in another inventor, charles Weiss. I would say weiss, but he's American. I think. So. Weiss 1959. He's on a TV show on CBS called to tell the truth. Little quotes from him.
0:19:38 - Will: Please tell me it is the smell of truth.
0:19:40 - Rod: I wish it was, but no. To tell the truth.
0:19:42 - Will: Can you put that?
0:19:43 - Rod: That's how you can tell someone's lying. The smell. This is Charles. I have invented a process to make movies smell. I call the process. But that sounds like kind of fun.
0:20:03 - Will: They both sound fun.
0:20:05 - Rod: So he called it aroma. Rama. The movie that was going to debut in was called behind the Great Wall. It took two and a half years to make, and it was unclear whether that was the movie or the aroma thing. I think it might have been a combo. So the quote goes on from Charles Weiss. In addition to seeing the action and hearing the dialogue, our audiences will be able to smell the scenes. More than 100 different aromas will be injected into the theater during the film.
0:20:29 - Will: This is behind the Great Wall.
0:20:30 - Rod: Yeah. Among these are the odors of grass.
0:20:33 - Will: No, I want Sichuan chicken. I want some.
0:20:37 - Rod: It's in there. No, it's not. Some chicken. Fried rice. Earth. Exploding firecrackers.
0:20:43 - Will: That smells good.
0:20:45 - Rod: A river. Incense. Burning torches. Horses. Restaurants. The smell of restaurant. And my favorite, the scent of a trapped tiger.
0:20:55 - Will: It's like piss and fury. I don't want to smell the smell of a trapped tiger. That means you're too close to a trapped tiger.
0:21:08 - Rod: Yeah.
0:21:08 - Will: I have no desire to be near a trap tiger.
0:21:10 - Rod: It also means you're a cunt because you've trapped a tiger.
0:21:13 - Will: I feel like even that piss there's pheromones in that that are saying, I'm going to fucking gut you with my claw and I will fucking go all the way through that.
0:21:22 - Rod: Reckon those pheromones are strong enough that you would gut yourself.
0:21:26 - Will: I feel like down in your basal bit of your brain, you know, the old bit of your brain. You are terrified of this thing. And it is secreting all of the pheromones to say, be terrified of me.
0:21:37 - Rod: Well, this movie will give you that.
0:21:42 - Will: I'm not a big watcher of horror movies because they scare me. But I I am I am a huge applauder of horror movies that they can scare me. I think it I think it's an amazing art form to make people go so far into the zone. It's like, okay, so we know ghosts aren't real, but we're going to make you feel like, holy shit, this ghost is about to get you not just.
0:22:04 - Rod: During the movie, for two to three years afterwards.
0:22:07 - Will: But I think that is a it's a beautiful art form. And to make people feel that is great.
0:22:12 - Rod: Imagine a horror movie with smell.
0:22:15 - Will: Smell of ghost, smell of trapped tiger.
0:22:18 - Rod: It's terrible. And he goes on to say, we believe like Rodyard Kipling, that smells are surer than sounds or sights to make the heartstrings crack.
0:22:28 - Will: Yeah, crack is a strange word.
0:22:30 - Rod: So here's a synopsis of behind the Great Wall from Eleanor Manika from Allmovie.com. In an era where contact with mainland China was next to nothing, many other reviews called it Red China because that was the time any film showing scenes from the People's Republic was worth seeing.
0:22:46 - Will: Sure. No, totally fair. And so these were actually shots from inside China. Yeah, actually behind the Great Wall. Absolutely. And I totally get that. That'd be cool.
0:22:55 - Rod: In 1959, the shots of the Great Wall itself, the rolling green hills beyond it, harbors temples, flower gardens, cityscapes were all enhanced by an idiosyncratic fleeting experiment in cinematic insanity.
0:23:08 - Will: Aromarama, I do feel you could imagine. You get the cinematographers, they're like, I want to take really beautiful shots of China. And then the producer's like, okay, yes and yes. And we're going to get the Smello Vision team to just invent stuff. Sorry, Aromarama.
0:23:25 - Rod: Aroma, please.
0:23:26 - Will: To just invent stuff based on this.
0:23:28 - Rod: What if I go across a great wall? It smells a little bit like piddle. Really? Have you been there? No. Smells a little bit like yeah, but.
0:23:36 - Will: We got a lot of that one. We're going to use that one a lot.
0:23:38 - Rod: You've got too much people.
0:23:39 - Will: Also restaurant and trap tiger restaurant.
0:23:41 - Rod: Yeah. What's this? Smell restaurant. The consensus was, according to Eleanor, in the end, that smelling a film just cannot make up for good direction, good acting and good cinematography.
0:23:54 - Will: I'd love if it could.
0:23:57 - Rod: However, for a while, the technique gave new meaning to the phrase, this film stinks.
0:24:00 - Will: Yeah.
0:24:02 - Rod: So the film was released on the 9 December 1959, which is a bit over a month ahead of Scent of Mystery a. So it beat it to the cinemas. So now we have aroma. Rama versus smellovision. Or what I would call the Stank wars. No, no one else called it that. That's my fault. Here are the mechanisms, just briefly. So Aromarama smells went through the theater's regular air ventilation system. So you basically stand there with a little spritzer in the AC and go.
0:24:30 - Will: Or a machine spritzers, but yeah, it's in the AC.
0:24:33 - Rod: Cool. Yep. Smello Vision, however, the odors are piped through plastic tubing connected to individual seats.
0:24:40 - Will: All the way into the seats, all the way miles of plastic tube. That's a big setup.
0:24:45 - Rod: So not a lot of theaters were doing it.
0:24:46 - Will: Hang on. So that Smell of Vision goes to the seats.
0:24:48 - Rod: Smell of Vision is the detailed one.
0:24:50 - Will: And Aromarama is just sort of the general.
0:24:52 - Rod: Yeah, pour some shit in the AC filter. Variety magazine called the competition between Scent of Mystery and behind the Great Wall the Battle of the Smellies. Some build it as a contest, from my reading of these different reviews and things. Some build it as a contest between the movies themselves. But really there is about the pong tech. So some reviews. Are you ready for some reviews?
0:25:13 - Will: Yeah.
0:25:15 - Rod: A lot of quoting to come. Okay. Great Wall and Aromarama first because we've kind of had a few Scent of Mystery, and we'll get to that in a tick. First one, the Sunday News awarded the film behind the Great Wall three and a half out of four.
0:25:30 - Will: No, just for a second.
0:25:32 - Rod: Why four?
0:25:32 - Will: Four stars is not a system.
0:25:34 - Rod: Not a thing.
0:25:34 - Will: Maybe it was back then. No, but we've had star inflation. Five stars.
0:25:38 - Rod: Ancient people are wrong.
0:25:39 - Will: So three and a half out of four. Let's convert that to percent.
0:25:43 - Rod: 81.9%.
0:25:45 - Will: No, do this proper. What is it in a five star system?
0:25:48 - Rod: Four. It's four out of four and a third 4.9. It's not terrible. It's not terrible.
0:25:57 - Will: No. It's doing all right. It's doing all right.
0:25:59 - Rod: So the review is called Behind Great Wall put Smell on Screen, which is, again, like you said, smell immediately. You go, that sounds bad.
0:26:07 - Will: Yeah. I'm not attracted by that, but no.
0:26:09 - Rod: The reviewer, Dorothy Masters wrote several wise men anticipated the birth of Aromarama, the major prophet being Charles Weiss, a public relations executive who journeyed afar to enlist the support of a chemical company, an electronic air filter plant, a camera equipment firm and an industrial timer organization. Fuck, I'd love to get into industrial timing. That's the growth. Together they devised a workable system for coordinating the picture of an orange with the smell of an orange.
0:26:38 - Rod: It's a pretty shiny review.
0:26:40 - Will: Yeah. So basically, what she's saying, it's coordinated.
0:26:44 - Rod: There was technology, it happened that existed.
0:26:46 - Will: Is she saying it's good or not?
0:26:48 - Rod: Kind of hard to say. But three and a half out of four, which we all know is 92.80%, it's not. Second one from Variety aroma Arama is merely a stunt. That's one line from Variety. Second line. The mechanics of it have now been demonstrated. The aesthetics will follow, but that's a prelude. So here's a chunky quote. The picture selected for Aromarama's introduction was a good choice. Leonardo del Bonzi's documentary on present day Red China entitled in the US. Behind the Great Wall.
0:27:21 - Rod: The actual smells of the suddenly dynamic land, however, were not reproduced in the theatre. That combination of human and soybean oil fragrance known to all travellers in China, was not suffused.
0:27:35 - Will: Smell criticism.
0:27:36 - Rod: Yeah, smell dis.
0:27:37 - Will: I know my soybean oil smell.
0:27:39 - Rod: And that was not it, sir.
0:27:41 - Will: And that's in fairness, you kind of got to be precise.
0:27:46 - Rod: Soy does smell like soy.
0:27:47 - Will: And I can imagine people going, let's use some olive oil, or whatever.
0:27:53 - Rod: What do we got left over?
0:27:54 - Will: It's got oil in the title.
0:27:56 - Rod: We got potatoes. So the smell was not suffused. No. She goes on, Only pleasant or neutral smells. Thank you. Very schoolmarmish. Someday, I suppose, an avant gardist will invade against the cliche of the pleasant smell and write an odor score for a film that will be the equivalent to today's unhappy ending. Cacophony and psychopathic protagonist. That's how she ends that quote. She's grumpy.
0:28:24 - Will: I do want someone to do that. Hipsters out there. If you can take over whatever the cinema is in La that had the aroma vision or the smellorama, I know I mixed them up and see what you can do. That is the pure. All right. You could do either like one of those torture. Porn movies saw or something like that. Or you could do, like, a dancer in the dark. Like, this is my sadness, or something. Do one of those.
0:28:50 - Rod: Wasn't that Patrick Swayze?
0:28:52 - Will: No. But then chuck on all of the smells to make us as sad as possible. This is when you were dumped in high school. This is when you failed in your first job.
0:29:02 - Rod: This is when you pooed yourself in front of a person you really wanted to marry. This is when you threw up.
0:29:08 - Will: If you can find all of those smells, please, I would love to go and watch that. I would watch the shit out of that.
0:29:14 - Rod: I'd definitely start. I can't promise how long I'd last.
0:29:18 - Will: Yeah.
0:29:19 - Rod: Here's the third and final of the reviews of behind the Great War. My favorite New York Times reviewer, Bosley Krauther. And you're already knowing that person's angry already. They're like they're mad with the name they've been given, so they're going to fucking take it out on everyone. So overall, he also called behind the Great Wall a stunt. But no, get ready. There's a few quotes here that I think are worth it.
0:29:42 - Rod: Check off the novel experience is precisely what we've labeled it a stunt. So check. The artistic benefit of it is here demonstrated to be nil. While odors are wafted through the theater as the picture is going on more or less in the nature of certain odors you might expect to accompany certain scenes. The accuracy of these odors is capricious. Oh, capricious odor. I've never heard those two words combined, to say the least. And the flow of sensations from the smell track is highly irregular.
0:30:15 - Rod: So you have an irregular flow.
0:30:17 - Will: Look, if you've left the restaurant and suddenly two minutes later you get the waft of the hoist in and you're like, fuck, we're in the street scene again. I want horses.
0:30:25 - Rod: Why am I smelling restaurant? It goes on this quote from Bosley Krauther there is also a section of the picture representing a tiger hunt that is vivid, contains a certain terror and pulses with suspense.
0:30:38 - Will: This is the trapped tiger.
0:30:39 - Rod: Yeah. And a final panoramic sequence of a Mayday parade in Pei Ping. There was a parade. Thousands of people sorry, persons joined in the flower deck display pictorially stunning breathtaking in its colorful massiveness. Colorful, massiveness. However, the odors concocted to characterize these and other sequences are mostly elusive, oppressive or perfunctory and banal. So basically, they were saying it didn't enhance the atmosphere, it confused it. And the final one from this, in between the suffusions of odors, the air in the theater is cleared by a purifying treatment that itself leaves a sickly sweet smell.
0:31:17 - Will: Yeah.
0:31:18 - Rod: Which tends to become upsetting before the film has run its full 2 hours.
0:31:23 - Will: I'm getting triggered by this.
0:31:24 - Rod: I know. When this viewer, this viewer, the author emerged from the theater he happily filled his lungs with that lovely, fume ladened New York ozone. It has never smelt so good.
0:31:37 - Will: Was this New York in the late 50s? Yeah.
0:31:39 - Rod: Early 60s. Yeah.
0:31:41 - Will: Okay.
0:31:41 - Rod: Perhaps we should note for the record that Aromarama is not to be confused with Smello Vision, another device for providing a motion picture with scents. Smello Vision is to be released by Mike Todd Jr. In January in connection with the new film Scent of Mystery. He is hoping all you moviegoers have strong olfactory nerves. So behind the Great Wall got a bit of a beating. However, when people reviewed it without Aromarama, they said, Pretty damn movie. Pretty damn good.
0:32:10 - Will: Okay.
0:32:11 - Rod: Good movie.
0:32:12 - Will: Do you have the details on how many Cinemas played the smell?
0:32:15 - Rod: Not on this one, no. And it can't have been actually, with this one, it could have been quite a few.
0:32:19 - Will: That was the easy one. That was the easy one. Spray it into the air conditioning.
0:32:23 - Rod: Yeah.
0:32:23 - Will: As opposed to the pipe it into every seat individually.
0:32:26 - Rod: Scent of Mystery, I think, at its max had three Cinemas set up because literally miles of plastic tubing.
0:32:33 - Will: Yeah, that alone ridiculous.
0:32:35 - Rod: So let's talk about that. So Scent of Mystery was shown this is the reviews of Scent of Mystery. Just a couple more because we've already talked about it. I love this bit. Scent of Mystery was shown before. It was an animated short film entitled Old Whiff.
0:32:49 - Will: What?
0:32:50 - Rod: It was about a bloodhound who'd lost his sense of smell, which seems a little strange.
0:32:57 - Will: Maybe it's just showing how sad things would be without your sense of smell. Let's dial it up.
0:33:02 - Rod: Oh, yeah. Let us show you what it's like to not smell things.
0:33:04 - Will: Yeah. No, they're saying you remember remember not smelling like all of those other shitty movies that you've seen before. There you go. Now have a smell of vision.
0:33:14 - Rod: You were Old Whiff, and now you're not. So the film opened, according to reviewers, in three special equipped theaters. So. February 1960 in New York, los Angeles, chicago. But the mechanism didn't work properly, of course. So Variety says aromas were released with a distracting hissing noise and audience members on the balcony complained the scents reached them several seconds after the action. So to be like, here's a gun going off. Bang. And then just as you're seeing a lady spray on perfume, you get gunpowder.
0:33:43 - Will: I'm going several seconds. Not being actually bad in that technology, I would thought several minutes. And I'd be like, okay.
0:33:50 - Rod: In a movie, though, if it's busy, even a few seconds would make a difference.
0:33:54 - Will: But anyway, we're expecting a lot from the technology to be on the second.
0:33:58 - Rod: On the second is they're critiques, they're critics. In other parts of theater, the odors were too faint causing audience members to sniff loudly to try and catch the scent which, of course, distracted others. I'm not getting anything.
0:34:12 - Will: I do like the leaning over and trying to sniff your neighbor's spot.
0:34:16 - Rod: You don't do that in movies. Anyway, some of the smells apparently did work. The ones that did work, flowers, perfume of the mystery girl in the film, tobacco, orange, shoe polish, port wine and port wine came in when a man was crushed to death by falling barrels. They also apparently did well with baked bread, coffee, lavender and peppermint.
0:34:34 - Will: Baked bread's. Nice.
0:34:35 - Rod: It's fucking delicious. So, a variety review, 1959 Scent of Mystery carefully planned to synchronize scents with action in the film. Unlike Aromarama, which hit the market first, the script is designed with the smells in mind. So in the Aromarama presentation, the odors were added as an afterthought, but in this it's different. So scent of mystery wanders over the Spanish landscape. It covers all kinds and we're thinking.
0:34:58 - Will: I have a whole bunch of Paella smell. Yes, and I want to show that. So let's get a scene where they're in a Paella restaurant.
0:35:04 - Rod: Apparently, the director wisely directed the film with tongue in cheek qualities. And a comedian said, a guy called Henny Youngman, who I don't know, but a comedian of the time, said, I didn't understand the picture because I had a cold at the time. So a reviewer in 2020, I assume, he went back and looked at the novel version. He said, it's travelogue mystery film. That's good despite being bad, it stinks, but only from the perfume released in theater.
0:35:28 - Rod: It's worth checking out for its gimmicking novelty of introducing smells into theater, great photography and a twist ending.
0:35:34 - Will: This is a 2020 review?
0:35:35 - Rod: Yes. So they went back and found a way to watch it.
0:35:37 - Will: They found a way to watch it, it would appear. Okay, so that's a big jump up from I watched a DVD of it.
0:35:44 - Rod: I think it was MTV or someone tried in the modern days to do one version. So even though technical adjustments by the manufacturers of Smell of Vision solved the problems that were going on with weird squirts, et cetera, et cetera, it was too late by the time a few people had seen it. So there were negative reviews, word of mouth. The film failed miserably and it quickly disappeared from theaters. That was the scent of mystery.
0:36:13 - Rod: It was re released two years later without smells, and Retitled Holiday in Spain, which the Daily Telegraph described as this, the film acquired a baffling, almost surreal quality, since there was no reason why, for example, a loaf of bread should be lifted from the oven and thrust into the camera for what seemed like an unconscionable time. So for the non Smell version, you're like, why the fuck are you waving this loaf of bread around? Like when 3D overdid it?
0:36:38 - Will: Yeah, but even then, is there a plot point in the Smello Vision version to really waft the bread in your face?
0:36:47 - Rod: Jesus. Breaking bread.
0:36:48 - Will: Where's the plot?
0:36:48 - Rod: No idea. So this is probably why, when the remix finally tod, little Tod, he cut the running time from 125 minutes to 75. And it did okay if it was played at cinemas, that just showed the Cinerama mega view. So it looked cool. Apparently it still looked cool. So with the failure of Scent of Mystery lub, the original guide, one source says, quietly disappeared Todd Jr little Tod. His Hollywood career also didn't go so well.
0:37:20 - Will: What?
0:37:21 - Rod: He had plans for two more films, which he announced with apparently some fanfare. One was a sci-fi picture called Creature from the Bronx. Smell.
0:37:29 - Will: What is the smell?
0:37:30 - Rod: We're not getting none. And the other was my favorite. Here. Bumpkin's holiday. And here it was going to be the plan was it was going to be a guy riding a bus. There was no dialogue. So this is some dude.
0:37:42 - Will: It's the smells of all the people that get on.
0:37:44 - Rod: None of these had smells. This was just movies. Neither of these films were made.
0:37:49 - Will: Okay?
0:37:50 - Rod: And after around 20 years from this, he finally produced one more movie, which was, to quote one critic, a painfully serious cinematic version of suicidal poetess Sylvia Plath's novel, The Belgium Great Cool. So smell of smell.
0:38:05 - Will: Odly. Serious is a strong review.
0:38:08 - Rod: It's the Belgia. Like, Sylvia Plath is not known for her upbeat, cartoonish kind of ways.
0:38:14 - Will: No, but there are many markets.
0:38:16 - Rod: I'm not saying she's bad. I'm just saying Sirius is one thing, painfully is another. So that was his last thing that I'm aware of. So, yeah, none of this sense stuff.
0:38:24 - Will: To yeah, you don't come back from painfully serious. You don't like, no one out there is going, all right, give this guy some money. I want some more of the painfully serious stuff.
0:38:32 - Rod: I watched this movie and I wanted to kill myself. He's not a shining endorsement. So the dream didn't die, though, even though this stuff didn't carry on, so the dream didn't die of Smell of BBCT. BBCT. BBCTV interviewed a man who'd invented a new technology, which he also called Smellovision.
0:38:50 - Will: Did he check if anyone had done this before?
0:38:53 - Rod: Apparently not.
0:38:53 - Will: But it was only, like, six years later.
0:38:55 - Rod: No Internet. The tech allowed people to experience the same aromas they were going to see in the TV studio. So they demonstrated this. This guy chopped onions in the studio and brewed a pot of coffee. Viewers would call in later on to say, we totally smelt the stuff that came through the TV.
0:39:14 - Will: So they smelt the coffee and the onions? Yes.
0:39:17 - Rod: It aired on April the first. And that was deliberate. It was absolute fake. In 1982, John Waters have you seen shots of John Waters, the film guy? Very weird, old school, like, 1920s evil villain looking dude.
0:39:29 - Will: Oh, is he okay?
0:39:30 - Rod: He made a movie called Polyester, and he called it In Odorama. And what he did was it was kind of an homage to aroma, arama, and smell of vision.
0:39:41 - Will: When an Odor again, to go back to smell being not positive. Odor. Odor not positive.
0:39:46 - Rod: Odor is never positive. Smell could be like, it smells good.
0:39:49 - Will: A good odor. No, there is no good odor. That is, like, the best version of body odor.
0:39:57 - Rod: You smell more innocuous than not.
0:39:59 - Will: But no.
0:40:00 - Rod: Yeah, it's fucking awful. So he did a movie called Polyester, as I said, and it was accompanied by when I went to the movies, you got a scratch and sniff card.
0:40:08 - Will: Okay.
0:40:09 - Rod: And when a number flashed on the screen, you'd scratch the equivalent number on your little blob.
0:40:13 - Will: I don't want to work in a movie.
0:40:15 - Rod: No, you don't. The smells included sense of flowers, pizza, grass, glue, and feces.
0:40:26 - Will: Really?
0:40:27 - Rod: Yeah, feces. Well, John Wonders is a dirt bag. He said in one interview a bit later, he was stoked that audiences were literally paying to smell shit. And then for the DVD release, though, he was told they had to take away the smell of glue because, as he put it, political correctness. Because glue you get high on. And the slug line for the release was it'll blow your nose. So when they put out the DVD version, what they did was the jerks, they gave you the little card, the first smell, because I didn't tell you what it is. So the first smell was roses.
0:40:55 - Rod: Okay, cool. The next one flatulence. Then pizza, gasoline, skunk, natural gas, and on and on it goes. Newcastle.
0:41:05 - Will: No, I'm not against this is using scent as an art thing. Okay. You're going to smell skunk, and it's going to be interesting in your nose.
0:41:13 - Rod: I've never smelt skunk, but I gather it's beyond horrific nasally. Beyond horrific, yeah. Other people tried. 2003 rugrats go wild. They had a scratch and sniff thing.
0:41:26 - Will: Did they really? Rugrats.
0:41:27 - Rod: I can't believe you haven't seen that, because you have children who are rugrats.
0:41:31 - Will: Is in the wrong zone. I watched a bunch of rugrats, but okay. Not with kids. I didn't know they had a smell of vision episode.
0:41:38 - Rod: Dude, it's got to have a hobby. 2011 Spy Kids all the time in the world.
0:41:43 - Will: I do know Spy Kids. I don't know if I've watched that one. Spy Kids. They're not great movies.
0:41:48 - Rod: No. Isn't that Emilio Estevez and Molly Ringwald?
0:41:53 - Will: No. Robert Rodriguez, I think.
0:41:55 - Rod: Robert Rodriguez.
0:41:57 - Will: No. I'm not going to remember.
0:42:00 - Rod: I'm not going to remember. But it's anyway, they had a crack. They used a Romascope scratch and sniff, blah, blah, blah. And finally, though, what about did it go beyond movies? So this smell thing is a thing. So in the 1990s, there was a California startup called Digicense, and they launched their I Smell concept. They raised $20 million in their original offer. So what they wanted to make was an at home device that would work by plugging it into a computer's USB port.
0:42:29 - Rod: The smell would be generated from replaceable cartridge, like an inkjet printer. It would use are you ready? 128 primary odors are there to mix into every smell imaginable.
0:42:41 - Will: Are there. Really? Does that exist?
0:42:43 - Rod: That's what they had.
0:42:44 - Will: Bit of fecal and a bit of lemon.
0:42:46 - Rod: Yeah. And some chip with a little bit.
0:42:49 - Will: Of gasoline puff perfume.
0:42:52 - Rod: Problem was, it didn't work. Well, the smells commingled. They had the same problem as smell of vision at 2001, two years after they got the prototype ran out of money. Job done. In 2013, new scientists said, We've got the smelling screen. So Tokyo University actually the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology in Japan. Some researchers went, We've got a screen. So it makes smells appear to come from the exact spot on any LCD.
0:43:18 - Will: Screen that the thing can locate the smell.
0:43:21 - Rod: Yeah. So you got a cup of coffee.
0:43:22 - Will: Are they the right smells?
0:43:23 - Rod: Well, they tried coffee and stuff. So bottom left of your screen, you see a cup of coffee, and the mechanism means it smells like it's come from the bottom left of your screen.
0:43:30 - Will: That was not the biggest problem that I had with this. I know we have, like, two nostrils, but my biggest problem was not precisely defining the direction. I'm not a dog, Japanese. My biggest problem was getting the right odor for all of these things.
0:43:47 - Rod: Look, the claim seems to be that worked, but they had a continuous feed, so they had vaporizing gel pellets and four Airstreams. So there's an Airstream in each corner of the screen, so then the Airstream would blow out to sort of show.
0:44:00 - Will: The people really do believe it's going to happen.
0:44:06 - Rod: This is 2013. They said that, look, the system at the time, it only pumped out one scent at a time, but they were very excited that they could come up with cartridges, which you'd replace, like printer cartridges. Again, same thing. Have you heard about any of that? Have you seen any of that?
0:44:18 - Will: No, I really haven't.
0:44:20 - Rod: So I don't think, from what I looked at, nothing since the early 20 teens has moved on.
0:44:25 - Will: We're not that far from the 20 teens.
0:44:27 - Rod: Ten years.
0:44:28 - Will: Yeah. People work on these things slowly.
0:44:30 - Rod: I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it certainly freaking hasn't. And look, the bottom line to me, it seems so there seem to be at least three serious reasons why it doesn't work. One is, apparently we don't know a lot about how smell works in our brains and stuff.
0:44:44 - Will: Anyway, that's pretty big.
0:44:45 - Rod: It's an issue.
0:44:46 - Will: That's big an issue. Let's just say it's molecules. Let's just say it's molecules, and we're detecting huge variety of molecules, like vast in the way, and at a speed.
0:44:57 - Rod: Of change to be able to swap from one to the other and process the nuances. So that's an issue.
0:45:02 - Will: Yeah.
0:45:03 - Rod: Second, the tech so far is complex. And also my term pretty gooey. You need goo. And the other is, it seems, is, and there are other examples of this around 2013 as well, but we'll say that for another time. If you were to introduce this technology people would need to keep replenishing their goo cartridges. And it seems like we don't give a shit enough.
0:45:24 - Will: I'm going to add another version, fourth reason. Imagine we can get to a scenario. We go, okay, we can accurately understand how smell works, and we can accurately make smell via some sort of magical tiny 3D printer. Like it's at the molecule level. We can churn out exactly the right molecule.
0:45:44 - Rod: A wi printer.
0:45:44 - Will: Yeah. And it's in your TV. So theoretically, we could make all that stuff. Do we want it? I have no desire to go all of a sudden, ah, thanos is shitting himself at the end of just I just don't like my story sense not improved by smell.
0:46:05 - Rod: I agree. Even look, I mean, one of the bleeding edges in entertainment technology is always what's, driven by the porn industry. We know this, it just has been. And given that it sounds like I'm just being standard, revolting me. But honestly, though, it's true. Like video technologies, streaming technologies blair, Blair, Blair. The porn industry has had a big hand in all of those. I don't think it should have a big hand in this.
0:46:27 - Will: I'm struggling, I'm really struggling to imagine, okay, you're in an art museum and they go, okay, we can transport you to Chinese restaurant bruges. Yeah, whatever, that's cool. Okay, that's cool. I can imagine little bits where you go, okay, this is cool. But the idea of mainstream, mainstream, mainstream Hollywood movies going, okay, so super blockbuster. The only way to have a super blockbuster, a, you've got to have a great story, b, you got to make a great picture, and C, you got to have great smells.
0:46:58 - Will: I just don't believe it. There is no way that I care enough about smelling me. Neither the wins or the losses or anything. It doesn't add to it enough.
0:47:10 - Rod: Me neither. Look, I love visuals. I love Sci-Fi, for example, I don't care what a spaceship smells like. I mean, unless it's real.
0:47:17 - Will: I'd like to know.
0:47:18 - Rod: Yeah, but you don't know if that's true because it's made up. But yeah, I agree. Do I need to smell it?
0:47:22 - Will: Is this like a virtual reality thing, though? We're still thinking TV. Stop it, man.
0:47:28 - Rod: It's being old fashioned.
0:47:29 - Will: Go 3D, put the goggles on and suddenly you go, okay, this will actually immerse me way more.
0:47:34 - Rod: But 3D is a good example because that's gone well.
0:47:37 - Will: Yeah, exactly.
0:47:38 - Rod: Remember the 3D TV thing for a.
0:47:40 - Will: While for I know. Literally, I think buy one anymore. I think my previous TV had the 3D button and this one doesn't even have it. Yeah, did you ever use it? Once.
0:47:50 - Rod: And was it 3D?
0:47:53 - Will: Kinda.
0:47:54 - Rod: No.
0:47:54 - Will: Kind of. And I can imagine you go to a virtual reality event space or something like that. You go, It's equipped for it, you do it, but no one's going to buy this at home. And the same thing, I can't imagine mainstream people just going, okay, let's have some smells with our Friday night movie.
