In 1902 a pair of French brothers, Georges and Gaston Méliés, released their movie Le Voyage dans la Lune (that’s “a trip to the moon” for English-only readers) and treated moviegoers around the world to a combination of live-action, animation and special effects the likes of which no one had seen before. Their 14-minute tale of a pioneering voyage to near space also spawned one of film’s more popular—and problematic for viewers and filmmakers who want films to be believable—genres: the futuristic science fiction epic. Today of course we know space explorers are using rockets, and not cannons, to launch spacecraft. And most people agree that while we’ve reached the moon, the explorers sent from Earth did not find insect-like “Selenites” living on the lunar surface, let alone do battle with them.

Flashlight brings this up only because we want to caution readers not to take fancy animated pictures, or predictions embedded in a movie script, as promises. Things change. The flickering screen may have hypnotized society, but a reliable oracle it’s not. (If you do find a reliable oracle, give Flashlight a call.)

This week Flashlight picked up a DVD copy of a prediction-laden, not-so-subtle piece of government spin about Don Young’s Way. That’s the official U.S. government name for the Knik Arm Crossing, the (so-far) mostly federally funded bridge between Anchorage and Point MacKenzie. It’s also one of two Alaska bridge projects that became known as bridges to nowhere in recent years as various members of the U.S. Congress began bickering and poking each other in the eye over so-called “earmarks.” Earmarks are out of fashion at the moment, but Flashlight predicts congress will continue to dedicate federal cash to projects in individual congressional districts and call it something else. It doesn’t take an oracle to see that passing out cash is a great way to get reelected. Congress learned that long ago. They also learned that when you pass a law that hands out money, you might want to include language that requires the money be spent with a purpose. Earmarks keep track of the money and the purpose.

But we digress. The Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority (KABATA) spent about $57,390 to produce and distribute a video called The Knik Arm Crossing, Bridge to Our Future—roughly 14 and one-half minutes of spin now playing on public access channels around the state. The money fits in neatly with the federally-required spending on the project. In an email, KABATA chief financial officer Kevin Hemenway says the TV spot was produced partly to comply with Federal Highway Administration and National Environmental Policy Act rules that “encourage innovation” in public outreach. The TV show compliments other forms of public outreach, such as newspaper announcements, meetings and presentations to industry types and community organizers, Hemenway says.

The video includes a couple of “flash-forward” events, which is where the content, as with all would-be oracles, gets a bit fuzzy. To their credit, the writers include a graphic that says “The Future” each time the script takes us into the same predictive futuristic zone the brothers Méliés pioneered. The first futuristic scene has local radio personality Holly Knight in front of a microphone labeled KBYR 700. Knight tells her listeners an accident has caused delays on the Glenn Highway, but traffic on the Knik Arm Bridge is “moving along without delay.”

All of which is well and good, but the next futuristic scene really caught Flashlight’s beam came next. It features KABATA’s current executive director, Andrew Niemiec, addressing the camera and telling the audience about how the bridge opened early “because of demand” and is making commutes faster for people who used to go the “long way” around Knik Arm. Niemiec also tells the camera that “almost forty percent of people that live in the Mat-Su Borough, they commute to Anchorage” and “today, they can take the shorter route.”

State Department of Labor statistics (as quoted in a Municipality of Anchorage housing report) show about 32 percent of workers in the Valley commute to Anchorage for their jobs.

Most Mat-Su area commuters live near Palmer and Wasilla, in areas that are less than an hour drive from downtown Anchorage on a good day. Maps published at KABATA’s web site, knikarmbridge.com, show people who live near those two towns are already taking the “shorter route” to Anchorage. You need to live south of Settler’s Bay for the proposed bridge to cut the current commuter time, according to KABATA’s own maps.

Of course, Niemiec was talking to us from “the future,” a time in which government transportation projects open months early just to satisfy demand. Maybe he was also talking to us from a future in which three-quarters of Palmer-area families pick up and move to Goose Bay or Knik. There’ll be a new prison in the now-sparsely-populated neighborhood, which will bring some jobs.

Niemiec isn’t the only person participating in this film, but his appearance seems to represent the KABATA spin consistently with spin we’ve seen in the past. The movie ends with an animated overflight of the bridge, complete with cars and trucks cruising the route. Just after flying over the cartoon bridge to Point MacKenzie the route turns hard to the right, as if the project prefers to serve Wasilla over Houston and Fairbanks. The animated scene flies over Port MacKenzie (a real-life port owned by the Mat-Su Borough) and we see two cartoon container ships being unloaded at the docks.

So in the future we’ll order more freight, or maybe vacate Port of Anchorage?

Flashlight takes all of these images, and oracles, with a grain of salt. We’ll continue to take our science fiction from people such as Georges and Gaston Méliés who were at least honest about the “fi” in their “sci-fi” film. Besides, their movie features showgirls cast as marines. The women wear sailor outfits and assist the adventuring astronomers in launching a spacecraft with a cannon. Sure it’s a stretch, but at least it’s an entertaining one.

scott@anchoragepress.com