A home video cassette of "Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud" is available
for $39.95 plus shipping. To order, call 1-800-336-1917.
Or write to P.O. Box 2284, S. Burlington, VT 05407
"Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it."
So said R. Buckminster Fuller, who, for the better part of the 20th century, went where no man had gone before as the maverick captain of the planet he called "Spaceship Earth." An architect, designer, engineer, poet, philosopher, author and global iconoclast, Fuller was a true visionary, a Renaissance man best remembered as creator of the geodesic dome. As part of its 10th anniversary celebration, AMERICAN MASTERS profiles "Bucky" Fuller, the man who has been called a 20th century Da Vinci, a modern Ben Franklin, and a jet-age Emerson.
What did his contemporaries think of him? See clips & quotes from the film, plus previously unpublished excerpts from the film's interviews.
In Buckminster Fuller's world, cars had
three wheels, houses were to be delivered by blimps, and cities were to
be built inside floating spheres. To many, Fuller
was a genius; to others, a crackpot. To most, he was both. This insightful
documentary lets viewers decide for themselves about the man considered
to be one of the 20th century's most distinguished, innovative and controversial
thinkers. "Fuller's journey on 'Spaceship Earth' encompassed nearly
a century of American life," said AMERICAN
MASTERS Executive Producer Susan
Lacy. "He's an ideal and fascinating subject for the series because
he played such a major role in so many important historical and cultural
movements, from the Machine Age to the counter-culture of the 1960s."
This first documentary on Fuller since his death in 1983 is produced and
directed by Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon.
New York Times film critic Janet Maslin, one of the critics
at this past winter's Sundance Film Festival, singled it out as one of the
most promising films and "an especially insightful and colorful portrait."
"It's remarkable how Fuller urged everyone to think globally and act
ecologically long before most people had even heard the words," said
Ms. Goodman. Added Mr. Simon, "We were so fortunate to be the first
journalists to be given access to Fuller's archive and unpublished personal
papers."
The Buckminster Fuller Institute
allowed the filmmakers unprecedented access to its archives and materials
for this documentary. At the core of the film are rare and previously unseen
materials, including film and video clips, photographs, and private correspondence
from Fuller's voluminous archives spanning eight decades.
The film, "Thinking Out Loud," looks at Fuller's unorthodox life.
Born cross-eyed, he was a belligerent youngster, twice kicked out of Harvard.
The illness and death of his young daughter led to a period of heavy drinking,
during which he considered suicide, but Fuller then decided to commit himself
to bettering mankind through a "design revolution." Understanding
that the earth's resources were finite long before such notions were standard
environmental thinking, he designed the Dymaxion
House in 1927. The metal structure hung from a central mast with outer
walls of continuous glass, affording maximum design efficiency with minimal
materials. Among its unique features: it was designed to be prefabricated
and airlifted to any site, was self-vacuuming and centrally air-conditioned.
Fuller next designed the Dymaxion Car,
a sensation when it was demonstrated on city streets and at the Chicago
World's Fair in 1933. Because the strange-looking streamlined car rode on
three wheels, seated 11 passengers, and got a remarkable 30 miles to the
gallon, it promised to revolutionize the auto industry -- until a tragic
accident ultimately derailed those plans.
The post-war housing shortage strengthened Fuller's resolve to devise affordable
housing for everyone. In 1945, Fuller was inspired by the sight of unused
grain bins to create a company to build low-priced homes, or "modern
igloos."
And in 1948, while serving as professor of architecture at Black Mountain
College in North Carolina, Fuller created the geodesic
dome, which he believed would herald a new era in housing throughout
the world. The geodesic dome was the invention that brought the spotlight
to his oeuvre, and in fact it was chosen as the design for the United States
Pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal, where the 200-foot-high version still
stands.
By the 1960's and '70s, Fuller was giving more than 400 lectures a year, and became a guru to young people. He traveled around the world 122 times to deliver his message that science and technology could solve all of humanity's problems.
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John Cage, composer
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Paul Goldberger, New York Times
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Al Hirschfeld, artist
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Arthur Penn, film director
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Merce Cunningham, choreographer
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Allan Temko, San Francisco Chronicle
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J.Baldwin, author and inventor
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Philip Johnson, architect
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Buckminster Fuller
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Gerard Hughes, classmate
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This TV program was funded by major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.
