FILM

14 Pews and Spacetaker present Science on Screen - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind- with JETheriot, Tuesday Feb 22, 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM.

Tuesday, Feb. 22nd at 7PM Baylor students' Zheng Lab -- Bad Project Lady Gaga parody will kick-off the "Science on Screen" series at 14 Pews. David Shim and Mary Wiese will introduce their hysteric parody that has gotten over 2.1 million hits on Youtube to the audience at 14 Pews. Afterwards they will discuss; the process of making this video, what is a "bad project" and what are they working on now. After their Q&A we will start the feature presentation of showing "Eternal Sunshine."

From acclaimed writer Charlie Kaufman and visionary director Michel Gondry comes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. An all-star ensemble cast shines in this comical and poignant look at breakups, breakdowns and breakthroughs. Joel (Jim Carrey) is stunned to discover that his girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet), has had their tumultuous relationship erased from her mind.

Out of desperation, he contacts the inventor of the process, Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), to get the same treatment. But as his memories of Clementine begin to fade, Joel suddenly realizes how much he still loves her. Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood co-star in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - a memorable film that The Wall Street Journal calls "a romantic comedy unlike any other!"

Afterwards there will be a short lecture by neurologist JETheriot on the nature of memory and its depiction in movies. JETheriot is an artist and neurologist specializing in the rehabilitation of persons with brain injury. He is known for his illuminating lectures on topics in mind science and brain hygiene.

Admission is: "Pay what you can."

Beginning February 26, Spacetaker’s ARC Gallery will be transformed into the brain of artist and neurologist JETheriot at the tender age of five. The Poo-tail Collection, a solo exhibition featuring multi-media works inspired by the childhood of JETheriot, will open with a public reception from 5 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, February 26. At 5:30 p.m., the artist (in cowboy costume) will offer a guided tour, explaining the stories behind the creation of his artwork from the perspective of a neurologist. The exhibit will remain on display through March 19 and is free and open to the public.

About the "Bad Project"Lady Gaga Parody:
Baylor students' Lady Gaga parody racks up more than 2 million views on YouTube
Nick de la Torre/Chronicle

If brainy medical students in white lab coats don't know how to trigger a worldwide viral outbreak, who does?

It's fitting that the Houston students responsible for a YouTube standout video spend most of their days --– and nights --– in a cluttered seventh-floor science lab on the seventh floorat Baylor College of Medicine. The students' lighthearted take on the tedious trials of lab work, captured in a video that parodies Lady Gaga's hit Bad Romance, has become something of a pandemic, virtually speaking, of course.

Titled Zheng Lab -- Bad Project, the video has surfaced on science blogs, Facebook pages, even a link on Roger Ebert's Twitter feed, as it fans out across the social mediasphere, racking up more than 2 million page views on YouTube.

"It's permanently on my iPad," said Dr. Scott Basinger, an associate dean of the graduate school of biomedical science at Baylor. "What this video shows is that despite the pressures of creating original research, our students are incredibly creative. And they take time to have some fun."

With the help of fellow Baylor student and Gaga impersonator Mary Wiese, 31, director David Shim, 29, choreographed, shot and edited the video over three days in January for an annual contest held by the school's Genetics Department. Shim posted the video Jan. 20, and by week's end it was receiving hundreds of thousands of hits a day, the filmmakers estimate. To their giddy surprise, the video is even rumored to have a fan in National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins, according to Baylor faculty members who count him as a friend.

watch video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl4L4M8m4d0

"Having the rock stars of the science world see the video is almost the same as if Lady Gaga had seen the video," Shim said. "We've been surprised and pleased that many prominent directors and researchers have come across the video and liked it."
BCM student Stephanie Nemir lent her voice to the production, gracefully navigating Shim and Wiese's clever, disgruntled lyrics, which spoof the maddening uncertainty that lurks within a field of study founded upon, and in search of, timeless absolutes.
"Everything was done very last minute," said Shim, who is studying neuroscience and remains utterly surprised by the video's popularity. "I don't think anyone expected it to explode the way it has."

A "bad project," as the filmmakers explain it, can be anything from a worthless experiment to a poorly formulated topic of study that drags on indefinitely.

"The video contradicts the idea that science is straightforward," Shim said. "For a lot of jobs, I think, time in equals output, but in science you have to sit there and struggle. Endless troubleshooting and repetition are just part of the job."

Though stripped of the original music video's glossy sterility and the mechanized precision of Gaga's cultish knot of backup dancers, Bad Project remains, in fact, really bad ---- but endearingly so. Clad in safety gear with an ill-fitting blonde wig mounted atop her head,
Wiese is the video's centerpiece, her cheerless expression channeling the disillusionment of aggrieved graduate students everywhere.

Her backup dancers provide comic relief during five minutes of questionable singing and hilariously halting movements that confirm your worst suspicions about the natural rhythmphysical prowessof people who spend their days peering into beakers with oversized goggles strapped to their foreheads.

Such is the video's charm, of course, which could explain why it has spawned a flurry of imitation videos among medical school students as far away as Thailand. Bad Project has logged page views in China, where YouTube is banned, but imitation sites abound, Shim says.

As YouTube commenters note, the video taps into a universal feeling among aspiring scientists.

"Loved the video!" says one YouTube fan. "It captures so well the worries that masters and PhD students suffer! I laughed a lot! Greetings from the technology department of UNESP (Universidade Estadual Paulista) in Jaboticabal, Brazil!"
— Peter J. Holley, peter.holley@chron.com

SCIENCE ON SCREEN:  The Science on Screen series attempts to expand film and scientific literacy. Throughout the year, 14 Pews along with its amazing co-curators (Susan Green and Rebecca Novak) will creatively pair screenings of classic, cult, indie films and documentaries with lively presentations by experts from the world of science, technology, and medicine.

Each film is used as a jumping-off point for a speaker to introduce current research or technological advances in a manner that engages popular culture audiences - for example -- the function of the amygdala in the zombie brains of Night of the Living Dead to how far epidemiology has come since The Andromeda Strain.