LOCATION The Making of “Welcome Back Mr. Fox”’ the rest of iste as ahead in a nasal cutie he winning 16mm film in the 1985 7 I XCINEMAGIC Short Fim Search, Walter Pitt's Welcome Back Mr Fox, isso well directed and produced that itcould easily be an episode on Tales rom the Darkside or even Amazing Stories— and it would stand out as one of the better episodes on either of these shows. Pitt, ‘who made the film as a graduate thesis Project at New York University film school, intentionally kept the running timeto21 minutes—the length of a Tales from the Darkside episode. Welcome Back Mr. Fox s the story of a famous movie producer who has himself 36 CINEMAGIC#33 Inthe last shat inthe im, Fx es cut anarowing scream when he realizes that he is condemned to ve cryogenically frozen after dying from lung cancer. Several decades later, he is brought back to life and finds himself ly. ingin a hospital bed, unable tomove. An overbearing, egotistical man, Fox threat: ens the orderlies, flirts with the nurses and makes fun of a poor git! who tries to be- friend him. The girl hasalso been brought back to life, decades after a successful suicide attempt. Still wearing bandages ‘on her wrists, the girl desperately seeks Fox's friendship because she feels he is the only person in the world who can un- derstand what it feels like to come back from the dead to an alien world, decades By JOHN CLAYTON after every person she knew has died. Ina merciless tirade of insults that reveals his. true character, Fox calls her a pathetic loser and taunts, "What's the matter, Deb- bie, cut yourself shaving? ‘Towards the end of the film, Fox makes the horrible discovery that he has no body—his body was too ravaged by ‘cancer to be saved—he is only a head at: tached to a life-support machine! ‘The idea for Welcome Back Mr. Fox ‘came from a newspaper article | read when | was in San Francisco about a group cof cryogenic facilites,” Walter Pitt begins, ‘There was one place where it was cheaper to get your head frozen then to get your whole body frozen after death