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Ars Magna is a 7-minute documentary short that aired on the PBS program P.O.V. in July 2008. It focuses on Cory Calhoun, a wordplay enthusiast whose anagram of the first three lines of Hamlet’s “To Be Or Not To Be” soliloquy found unexpected popularity on the Internet.

Filming
Independent Seattle filmmakers Team Juicebox shot Ars Magna as part of the 2008 International Documentary Challenge, a timed filmmaking competition in which entrants produced a short non-fiction film in four days. Filming and editing took place in Seattle, Washington from March 7-10, 2008.

Synopsis
In 1996, Calhoun anagrammed the first three lines of Hamlet’s “To Be Or Not To Be” soliloquy: To be or not to be: that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune... Into: In one of the Bard's best thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten. Calhoun submitted the anagram to Anu Garg, founder of Wordsmith.org. Garg posted the anagram on the website’s Anagram Hall of Fame page. Over the next several years the anagram became a popular internet meme, appearing in numerous books and news articles. In 1999, Sydney Morning Herald contributor Eric Shackle called it “the world’s all-time best anagram.”

The documentary features Calhoun discussing the role of anagrams and wordplay in his everyday life, as well as interviews with his wife and coworkers. Filmmakers used motion word graphics to illustrate Calhoun’s anagrams as he described them.

Interviews with Seattle residents about anagrams are shown over the closing credits. The documentary concludes with the phrase “International Documentary Challenge” anagramming into “Man, change could alter nation entirely.”

The HotDocs film competition required the date of at least one of the days of filming to be shown somewhere in the documentary itself, to verify that the film was completed during the allotted four-day period. Ars Magna filmmakers featured a brief upside-down shot of the date (Sunday, March 9, 2008) at the top of a page from the Seattle Times crossword puzzle section as Calhoun completes the Word Jumble® that appeared on it.

Awards
On January 25, 2008, the series was released in Germany where it was known as Die Spezialisten Unterwegs as a five-disc DVD box set (Region 2) that includes all episodes (including the originally unaired final episode) with both English and German soundtracks and German subtitles.

Cast and Crew

 * Dean Paul Martin played Dr. Billy Hayes, the non-powered yet undisputed leader of this misfit team. Billy was a young research scientist at the Humanidyne Institute who specialized in "human anomalies" and a fast-talking but good-hearted schemer full of boyish enthusiasm who often got the team into as much trouble as he got them out of.  Although easily distracted whenever an attractive woman walked by, he was honestly interested in getting involved in a serious relationship with Jane Miller even after she showed up pregnant by another man.
 * Kevin Peter Hall played Dr. Elvin "El" Lincoln, Billy's colleague and close friend. El was a towering black man who gave himself the ability to shrink for minutes at a time from his height of seven-foot-four to eleven inches via hormonal treatments which he activated by pressing a nerve on the back of his neck. A recurring joke after such transformations was that he always had to put on the tiny change of clothes he carried with him for his small size. The character was shy and struggled socially, and despite being so tall he played basketball poorly.
 * Mark Thomas Miller was Johnny Bukowski, a.k.a. Johnny B. He was a rock and roll musician who was electrocuted on stage, thus giving him formidable electrical powers.  Wearing sunglasses because his eyes glowed when he was fully charged, he could hurl lightning bolts and run at superhuman speed, easily outracing in one episode a parody of the Six Million Dollar Man, but he was vulnerable to water which short-circuited him and burned his flesh.  He was a big Chuck Berry fan, in the pilot singing Johnny B. Goode when he went into battle.


 * Courteney Cox played Gloria Dinallo, a troubled telekinetic teen with a history of juvenile delinquency and a mother in a mental institution who claimed Gloria's father was from outer space. She had a major crush on Johnny.
 * Diane Civita played the scientists' secretary Miss Nance who, although she usually seemed more interested in doing her nails, going on her coffee break and watching her soap operas, was actually the one who kept their department running and was always there at the end of the show to turn off the lights and, in a running gag, say good-bye to the invisible man who Billy always forgot had been quietly waiting all day to see him.
 * Jennifer Holmes played Gloria's probation officer, Jane Miller. Although attracted to Billy, she was often put off by his eccentric behavior.  Her character appeared only in the earlier episodes.
 * Max Wright portrayed Dick Stetmeyer, the uptight director of the Humanidyne Institute. Unlike the other cast members, he was not actually considered to be one of the Misfits.
 * Mickey Jones played Arnold "Beef" Beifneiter a.k.a. the Ice Man, who got his power to freeze anything he touched from placing himself in an experimental cryogenic suspended animation unit back in 1937 due to grief caused by the loss of his beloved Amelia Earhart. The team would drive around in an ice cream truck because the lumbering and now rather simpleminded Ice Man would die if he got too warm, so they kept him in the freezer. Beef only appeared in the pilot episode due to legal objections from Marvel Comics who published a similar character in X-Men, but the characters continued to use the ice cream truck.


 * TV.com: Misfits of Science Episode Guide
 * International Hero: Misfits of Science
 * Misfits of Science Wiki
 * Misfits of Science Wiki

Die Spezialisten unterwegs Superminds ミラクル・エスパーズ! Misfits of Science 超人特攻隊 (電視劇)