I wish I could talk in Technicolor - Ⓓ⓪④
One tends to embrace humor wherever it can be found. In early 2024, I encountered a bit of levity when my attention was drawn to a curious mention of Technicolor from the mid-1950s found within the January 29th issue of The New Yorker Magazine that ran a book review about the CIA – the review was written by critic Margaret Talbot in which she recounted an early and somewhat remarkable moment in American television history: the 1957 CBS broadcast of an acid test …50s television at its strangest.
Under the clinical guidance of famed UCLA psychiatrist, Dr. Sidney Cohen, a young female subject was dosed, knowingly, with a hit of LSD 25. Within a few hours, when prompted to describe what she was experiencing, she offered “I wish I could talk in Technicolor.”
Ms. Talbot’s article/review was entitled, Acid Reflux…that elicited an equally good laugh from me. My immediate thought was, if Talbot really wanted to seal the deal by citing the Technicolor process in an article with that particular title she could have at least referenced a “Technicolor yawn.” I’ll leave it to you to Google the meaning of that bit of British slang. But thinking more about the test subject’s comment, about wishing to be able to talk in Technicolor, my thought was, “don’t we all.”
That mention of Technicolor by the test subject wouldn’t be the last time someone would draw the association between the remarkable color process and LSD. Not that one would need to drop acid to experience those colors, but I do clearly recollect first seeing Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1969, at a theatre just north of San Diego, blazing on a tab of psilocybin …my eyes rivetted to the screen. More curious to me is the notion of being able to “talk in Technicolor.” It sort of calls up the challenge of trying to describe colors – more often than not lacking precision. Further, one hears the name Technicolor bandied about so often, with such a lack of discernment, that it begs the question…what is or was Technicolor?
That constant lack of understanding as much as anything else was what compelled me to delve into the history of Technicolor’s most celebrated accomplishment – IB dye-transfer imbibition printing. My hope is that the finished book, Alchemy in Technicolor, pays homage to that storied era of motion picture history.