Hey, everybody, got a great show for you today! Our guest is Keith Goldman and he builds amazing LEGO dioramas. Today’s show is an enhanced podcast so you’ll get to see his dioramas on your iPad, iPhone, iPod or on iTunes and see for yourself how amazing they are.
Come to think of it, you might have already seen dioramas based on the Logan’s Run movie last week on the web on blogs like Make and io9, which is how I found out about Keith.
I think the reason why people got so excited about Keith’s LEGO Logan’s Run diorama is because they combine to magical elements: LEGOs and Logan’s Run.
LEGOs are magical because you can build your own toys and create your own stories around them. And then you can take them apart and create something new. And while there seems like an infinite combination of things you can make with LEGOs you’re also challenged with building within the constraints of LEGOs plastic bricks, and that’s part of the fun, too.
And Logan’s Run?
If you recall, that was a movie where people lived in a domed city that was I’m complete ecological harmony but was essentially a shiny mall. Everyone was attractive and were complete hedonists. The only drawback to this utopia was that you had to die when you turned 30.
Some people didn’t want to die and wanted to escape to a place called Sanctuary where they could live out the rest of their lives. These people were called runners and the people who hunted them down were called Sandmen. And one Sandman, Logan, our titular hero, decides to run with our heroinn, Jessica, which takes them outside the domed city to the real world.
Looking back Logan’s Run seems kind of cheesy but there’s a lot going on in that movie. Logan’s Run is a retelling of the Garden of Eden story, but in reverse. Logan and Jessica are Adam and Eve who are kept infantilized in an artificial paradise. It’s only until they flee into nature that they become adults and can have a mature relationship with each other.
Logan’s Run can also be seen as a story about how civilization flattens us as individuals to better fit in a society. Logan’s Run can also be seen as a retelling of Plato’s cave story. When Logan returns from the natural world to the domed city to tell people that they don’t have to die, that there is a world beyond the domed city, he, like the character from Plato’s story, is regarded as crazy and a threat to their comfortable illusions.
Like a said there’s a lot going on.
And finally, as fake as the domed city looks in comparison to our CGI generated movies, I wanted to live in that world. By sheer force of imagination that world became real to me as a kid, and that’s kind of what it’s like building with LEGOs.
And that brings us back to Keith. So let’s go talk to him.
Songs heard on today’s show:
- The Daisy Riots “Girls Don’t Play Lego”
