John Mauchly. The father of the electronic computer, Mauchly lived an interesting life both professionally, as a scientific pioneer, and personally where he was a rebel in a time of conformity. With this being said “The Computer and the Skateboard” does a fine job of singing Mauchly’s praises but fails to be as engaging as it should be. While the facts provided are all interesting, ranging from Mauchly as a boy rigging up electrical equipment in order to evade his mother or the time he skateboarded in the middle of a class he was teaching to show Newton’s theories of inertia, the presentation of the events profiled in this documentary are unable to do the material justice.
The most successful filmmakers making biographies realize that to cover an individual over the course of their entire life would be too much to capture successfully in a two hour running time. Films like “Ed Wood” and “Ali” take what the filmmakers deem the most important time period for the historical figure and focuses on that to serve as a metaphor for their life. Both of these films circumvent the inherent pitfalls of the average biography: Too much information provided with not enough focus. This is problem that plagues “The Compuer and the Skateboard”, which never figures out what is attempting to say about Mauchly.
Whereas the two examples listed above are staged recreations of the people being profiled, “The Computer and the Skateboard” consists of talking head interviews with some of Maulchy’s closest collaborators, including his wife Kay, and existing footage of Mauchly himself from the 1970’s. The first forty minutes addresses Mauchly’s quest to build the first electronic computer and subsequent clash with the Moore School in the University of Pennsylvania who wanted to take the patent rights from him. Once this segment is over the film drifts for the next forty minutes with snippets regarding his childhood and later in life butting heads with overzealous McCarthy followers in the 50’s who blacklisted him. The film’s last ten minutes are devoted to the lawsuit that ruined his health and for a while tarnished his career. If this synopsis seems rambling it is because the presentation of the facts are scattershot as well. The film’s strongest portion is the first half hour since this is what Mauchly would be known for as his crowing achievement. The fact that credit for his own brainchild was later given to rival John Vincent Atanasoff sounds devastating and is what many of those interviewed attribute to Mauchly’s poor health at the end of his life, yet this is barely given any coverage as compared to the small anecdotes that rule the middle portion of the film. Since this is a tragic end to the success of the strong opening half hour it should play a much larger role.
The lack of chronology hurts this piece greatly since the highlight of Mauchly’s life is revealed too early on. It is the equivalent of ending “Ali” not with Ali’s fight with Foreman (often seen as the crown jewel in his illustrious career) but instead with less interesting material from the next few years of his life. By profiling Mauchly as a child, then showing his invention of the ENIAC (Electronic Numeral Integrator And Calculator), and then ending on the feud with Atanasoff the film would have had a natural progression, as it stands now it comes of as random and distracting. The other problem is this material is at times quite dry. While there is an over abundance of movies that deal with filmmakers wrestling with film related problems and it is refreshing to see a documentary cover a subject matter not often seen, the presentation is mostly just talking heads recounting “cute” but not particularly captivating tidbits regarding Mauchly.
At over an hour and a half the documentary seems too long. By rearranging the interviews so that his life is shown from beginning to end and cutting some of the more frivolous stories down “The Computer and the Skateboard” would give a true innovator the recognition he deserves.
