Werner Herzog vs. Lenny Lipton

“I admire the achievements, the technical achievements, but the film is an abomination because of its New Age schlock and bullshit. When I see them sitting in some sort of collective meditation or yoga or collective yoga class, it just makes me cringe. I want to be somewhere else, far away from the cinema.”

--Werner Herzog on James Cameron's Avatar

I was surprised to learn that Lenny Lipton had invented a lot of the 3D processes they use now. In the early '70's, he had written a book on independent filmmaking with a vast amount of technical information on 16mm and 8mm film and equipment. It was aimed underground and art filmmakers. Stan Brakhage wrote the foreword. 

 

I know very little about Lipton, but he claims to have written the poem that "Puff the Magic Dragon" was based on if that tells you anything.

I assumed he turned his back on hippie cinema, but New Age schlock may have been all the guy wanted all along. He changed tactics----he switched from advocating for extreme low budget film to inventing processes for movies that cost way too much---and was triumphant.