Patrica Tallman?

I was watching DOOM last night and when The Rock picks up the BFG, the computer spits out the name "Patricia Tallman". What's up with that?

In the story I think the name of the person the weapon was originally assigned to pops up on the display. In the real world it is probably just an "in joke". In addition to her acting, Pat is an accomplished stuntperson and has a long list of credits, especially on SF and other genre TV shows and movies, so she's known to lots of people on both sides of the camera. Also the FX business tends to be insular and somewhat incestuous, and the same folks end up doing at least some contract work on practically all the shows. (Hence the Woodland Creatures and the mystery prop that they've snuck into virtually every SF, horror or fantasy movie and TV show produced in the past 25 years or so.) Any number of people could have snuck Pat's name in as one of the dead crewman.

Regards,

Joe

Patricia Tallman has recently done stunts on the films Karla and Bewitched.

They're definitely not above in-jokes. One of the characters in Dr Carmack, coincidentally the name of one of DOOMs creators.

I know Pat's been everywhere, but I was just wondering if you had any concrete info on what the connection might be.
The first thing I did when the film was over was go to the special feratures, but damn, there was no commentary.

I looked at the full cast and crew list for Doom on the IMDB and no names jumped out at me as having really major connections to Pat or Jeffery or B5. But, again, you never know who knows who or how something will sneak into the credits of a movie. (I used to have a friend who worked for a textbook publisher. In part for their own amusement, and in part as "copyright traps" to catch people who just photocopied whole pages of books and used them elsewhere, they used to insert fake names into the list of contributors to a book, or in the reference section or index. Ward Cleaver, J.T. Kirk, E.A. Presley and H.S. Thompson were some of the more popular ones.)

I haven't seen Doom myself. Not really my thing, even though I used to play the game a lot. Might be worth a rental on DVD.

Regards,

Joe

The first thing I did when the film was over was go to the special feratures, but damn, there was no commentary.

Click to expand...

That'll be on the special edition that they'll no doubt release three months from now.

Regards,

Joe

I used to have a friend who worked for a textbook publisher. In part for their own amusement, and in part as "copyright traps" to catch people who just photocopied whole pages of books and used them elsewhere, they used to insert fake names

Joe

Click to expand...

A few years back, it was revealed that the fictitious town of "Goblu" was placed just over the border from Michigan, in Ohio, by the State map makers. "Go Blue" is the U of Mich.'s most used sports salute. U of M and Ohio State are major football rivals.

Map publishers more-or-less invented the idea of copyright traps. Hammond, one of the largets U.S. globe and map makers, started putting fake maps, towns, rivers and lakes into out-of-the way places in its maps, or misspelled obscure street names, in order to catch copycats back in the 30s, if memory serves. Internet mapmakers do the same, as well as finding other ways to make their maps unique, identifiable and capable of being protected. (A serial murder case was famously solved when a police lab technician identified a part of a map from a particular web site that had been cropped and printed out as part of a tauntin note to the cops telling them where a body could be found. Once the tech had identified the site, they were able to obtain warrants to trace the IP and physical address of a guy who had downloaded the map from a computer in the area where the killings took place a few days before the police received the letter. They found a torture chamber in the guy's basement and evidence - including pictures, video and audio tapes - of a number of previously unknown murders.)

Regards,

Joe

I think I may have encountered the mispelling of obscure street names, during my map making for bike rides. One in a nearby small town is Winegap, but it is spelled Winegar on one map. Typo, or deliberate, who can say. But, next time I am taunting the police, with a map of my torture/murder victims, I'll check the map closely, remove any errors, and add a couple of my own. That should throw them!

The first thing I did when the film was over was go to the special feratures, but damn, there was no commentary.

Click to expand...

That'll be on the special edition that they'll no doubt release three months from now.

Regards,

Joe

Click to expand...

Oh, that would be the BFE?