The Real Joker behind Professor Pille's Planetary Panopticon

David Jacob Osterman (1957)

• The whimsical and thought-provoking Professor Pille's Planetary Panopticon was originally the brainchild--way back in 1959--of a shy and seemingly unremarkable University of Wisconsin journalism student from Green Bay named Dave Osterman. Osterman--an underclassman that year, and something of a science fiction/horror "nerd" (H.P. Lovecraft being a particular favorite)--thought it would be entertaining to create a newsletter for a fictitious and somewhat oddball research institute (initially called Professor Pille's College of Occult Arts) situated in a nearby parallel dimensional world--vaguely similar to our own--called Erde. Osterman's plan was to limit the "publications" of this fantasy institute to supernatural and paranormal topics. After two amateurish editions, he changed the name of the establishment to the Mt. Palomine Institute of Mysteries when, as he later admitted, it became apparent that the topics his "paper" explored ranged well beyond ghosts, psychics, and flying saucers. The Mt. Palomine Institute newsletter itself was called the Planetary Panopticon (eventually Professor Pille's Planetary Panopticon) and at roughly the same time as this change in the direction of his newsletter took place, he effected another more significant and probably related one with his studies-switching his major from journalism to political science with a minor in sociology. Osterman printed the first "editions" of the Planetary Panopticon with a toy printing set he'd received as a Christmas gift in his early teens, and distributed them free of charge at the school cafeteria while dressed up as a turn-of-the-century Chicago newsboy.
• The infrequently published humor/satire one-sheet became so popular with students and faculty at the University of Wisconsin that its creator was eventually asked by the editor of The Badger--the school newspaper--to be a regular contributor, enabling Osterman to focus his energies on his rapidly mounting workload. The first Badger posting, by "Professor Pille," the "head" of the Mt. Palomine Institute, appeared, appropriately, in the April 1, 1960 edition. Osterman used his school-wide "bully pulpit" as a platform for wacky humor and fantasy but also as a way to have some fun with the current events that were of increasing interest to him. A survey of contributions from those years reveals topical concerns as far-ranging as the missile-gap, hula-hoops, sputnik, tail-fins, Eisenhower's secret treaty with the E.T.s, the "Ugly American," fluoridation, and the tempest-in teapot controversy over the Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu.
• Dave Osterman graduated with a B.A. in 1962 but remained at the University of Wisconsin as a graduate student, occasionally offering new Postings from the Institute-- when workload permitted--until he received his PhD. in Political Science in 1965. Dr. Osterman declined a tenured teaching position at the school, and instead accepted a job with the Central Intelligence Agency where he joined a highly classified CIA extraterrestrial and ancient technologies working group. He retired from his position as CIA Assistant Director of Special Projects in 1999 and now lives in the seaside community of Portville, in the Narragansett National District, where he tends a garden and writes a popular series of children's books about a mythical land called "Da Middle Urth."
• In an interview published in The Badger in 1966, Dr. Osterman admitted that many of the characters he had created in his Panopticon stories were based directly on eccentric family members, teachers, and various friends. The "Public Assuagement Director," Anatole Zliplitt, was, according to Dr. Osterman, a near perfect recreation of a crotchety-yet-lovable German great uncle from Milwaukee; Dave Dimp was a caricature of a well-liked "goofball" cousin who lived in Tennessee and whose childhood nickname was Dimples. Many of the Teutonic and Nordic references scattered throughout the Pille Universe were simply nods to his family's mixed German/Norwegian heritage. However, Professor Pille, Dr. Osterman explained, "just appeared" to him one day while he was tinkering with an electrical contraption of his own design at his family home in Green Bay--electronics and optics having been hobbies of his when he was a teenager.
• In 1967, the rights to the Professor Pille concepts and characters were purchased from their creator by Hammer Pictures in Great Britain and in 1969 the film, The Perils of Professor Pille, staring Peter Cushing and Anthony Quayle, was released to good reviews. This was to be the beginning of a succession of offbeat Professor Pille films first produced by Hammer and then picked up and continued by Universal when that British horrror and adventure film company collapsed in the 1970s. The series includes Revenge of Professor Pille, Song of Professor Pille, Professor Pille Goes Home, Daughter of Professor Pille (with Uma Thurman as Patty Pille), Return of Professor Pille, and Pille Happy. Aside from Quayle, the Professor role has been played by, among others, Raymond Burr, Sir Ralph Richardson, Jeremy Irons, Sean Connery, and Leonard Nimoy (in a made-for-TV adaptation).
• A well-disguised Jim Carey took on the role in the 2004 release Pille X--the twelfth and most recent in the series (although the confusing title caused many to think it was the tenth film), and the first to feature the Professor's daughter Patty (Saffron Burrows) as the story's lead character. In this CGI-packed, action/adventure film, Erden Imperial Intelligence Service operative Patty Pille (agent Double-Oh-Boy!) battles the evil "Urther" Pez-head-ent Billery Quentin (played by an icy and in-drag Alice Krige replete with Chaplin-esque moustache) and her nail-spitting homicidal assistant Condie Leashlaw (Samantha Mumba) when the Merken Schwarz-technikers develop a massive version of "Der Peeper," called a Fargate. After cunningly drugging Erde's protector, Wotan, the "Urther" villains, under the direction of a mysterious Überlord, attempt to use the trans-dimensional portal to invade peaceful Erde and place the entire planet under the "tough-love" iron rule of the brutal and matriarchal Merkans.