Love in the Shadow of Jupiter
STRANGE FRAME: LOVE & SAX, a sci-fi musical ⁓
Bitsea and Parker
STRANGE FRAME is a story of thwarted love that turns into a quest for reunion. At the start of things, saxophonist Parker C. Boyd (Claudia Black) indruduces us to singer/songwriter Naia (Tara Strong). “Naia is and always will be my love supreme…She dreamt of the fierce calls of an unchained slave that would ring out above the continuous rioting and free her whole family,” says Parker. “This is the strange story of what happened when I fell in love with this amazing woman.”
Parker and Naia
It is the year 2793, and the human race has been transplanted to a terraformed Ganymede after rendering their home planet uninhabitable. Mango One, an unregistered trash hauler, illegally jettisons a load of junk and zaps it into oblivion 67,000 kilometers above Jupiter. This would be unremarkable except that one of the bits jettisoned is a vehicle that looks a lot like a late 1950s DeSoto. The tech in this story all has a retro feel, even when it’s the Ganymede City Space Elevator.
The Car
Gene splicing has become commonplace, and extensive genetic tweaking has made it possible for humans to adapt to their new environment. The most common modifications involve skin that reflects radiation, and fur for warmth.
Juliet Landau voices Bitsea, Mango One’s computer. Bitsea was once more than that, and may have at some point watched Battlestar Galactica, because she employs at one point the Cylon tag phrase โBy your commandโ. Bitsea is a contemplative intelligence who seems to have a non-linear perception of time. She tells Parker: “You cannot remember your first thought, nor do you have the capacity to process your last one…The sensory input of the here and now is what we cherish. It is our heaven. You take our chance of heaven from us.” Parker responds that she hasn’t taken anything from her kind, and Bitsea continues: “Someday you will.”
Reesa Abi Kiran Ariana Livingston III – First Mate on the Mango One
Naya is separated from Parker by a music industry that makes her a success by detaching her from reality entirely, leaving her with no control over her inputs or output. It becomes necessary for Parker to rescue her with the aid of the Captain of the Mango One, Philo D Grenman (Ron Glass) and his First Mate Reesa Abi Kiran Ariana Livingston III (Cree Summer).
One is never sure if the score by Shelley Doty and David Pelliccairo is illustrating the film or if the film is illustrating the music. The soundtrack features Doty, Scott Law, and Max Baxter on guitar; Dale Fanning on drums; and John Bamont & Jeff Hobbs on sax. “This is Not You” is written and performed by Paul Benoit. “Bitsea’s Story” by Joe Gore and Dawn Richardson is performed by Mental 99. “Parker’s Dream” is performed by G.B. Hajim, who is also the film’s cinematographer and director.
The film includes clips from Lena Horne’s 1938 musical comedy “The Duke is Tops“.
Naia and Parker
Claudia Black, in a video interview, said: “I kind of feel like my sexuality as an actress is something that I had to sign over to somebody else, some third party, and you feel like you have to spend the rest of your career fighting to get it back. When I first read the sex scenes that are contained in it, I was a little nervous and I emailed my agent and I said ‘Oh, I don’t normally do this stuff’. And then i kept reading and I really dug the story and understood what it was saying and as I said before, the love making is an element of this story rather than the be all and end all…it really was about the two characters connecting.”