When Albert Einstein & Charlie Chaplin Met and Became Fast Famous Friends (1930)

in Film, History, Science | December 29th, 2020

Pho­to via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“You do not real­ly under­stand some­thing unless you can explain it to your grand­moth­er,” goes a well-known quote attrib­uted var­i­ous­ly to Albert Ein­stein, Richard Feyn­man, and Ernest Ruther­ford. No mat­ter who said it, “the sen­ti­ment… rings true,” writes Michelle Lav­ery, “for researchers in all dis­ci­plines from par­ti­cle physics to ecopsy­chol­o­gy.” As Feyn­man dis­cov­ered dur­ing his many years of teach­ing, it could be “the mot­to of all pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tors,” The Guardian’s Rus­sell Gross­man writes, “and espe­cial­ly those who earn a liv­ing com­mu­ni­cat­ing the tricky busi­ness of sci­ence.”

Ein­stein became one of the world’s great sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tors by choice, not neces­si­ty, and found ways to explain his com­plex the­o­ries to chil­dren and the elder­ly alike. But per­haps, if he’d had his way, he would rather have avoid­ed words alto­geth­er, and pre­ferred acro­bat­ic feats of silent dar­ing to get his mes­sage across. We might at least con­clude so from his rev­er­ence for the work of Char­lie Chap­lin. Chap­lin was the only per­son Ein­stein want­ed to meet in Cal­i­for­nia dur­ing his sec­ond, 1930–31 vis­it to the U.S., when he was “at the height of his fame,” notes Claire Cock-Starkey at Men­tal Floss, “with news­pa­pers track­ing his every move and aca­d­e­mics clam­or­ing for expla­na­tions of his the­o­ries.”

The admi­ra­tion, of course, was mutu­al. Their first meet­ings hap­pened out­side the press’s scruti­ny, at Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios, “where the pair took a tour and had lunch togeth­er. They hit it off straight away, shar­ing quick wits and curi­ous minds.” In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Chap­lin writes that Einstein’s wife Elsa fina­gled an invi­ta­tion to din­ner at Chaplin’s house. And he “was only too hap­py to oblige,” Cock-Starkey writes, arrang­ing an “inti­mate din­ner, at which Elsa regaled him with the sto­ry of when Ein­stein came up with his world-chang­ing the­o­ry, some­time around 1915.”

The two con­tin­ued to cor­re­spond, and the big pub­lic unveil­ing of their friend­ship came when Chap­lin invit­ed Ein­stein to the pre­mier of City Lights in 1931 (see pho­to up top) where the mega-celebri­ties from very dif­fer­ent worlds were greet­ed by reporters, pho­tog­ra­phers, and ador­ing crowds. There are sev­er­al record­ed ver­sions of their con­ver­sa­tion. In one account, Ein­stein expressed bemuse­ment at the cheer­ing, and Chap­lin remarked, “the peo­ple applaud me because every­one under­stands me, and they applaud you because no one under­stands you.”

Chap­lin him­self wrote in his 1933–34 trav­el­ogue, A Come­di­an Sees the World, that one of Einstein’s sons uttered the line, weeks after­ward: “You are pop­u­lar [because] you are under­stood by the mass­es. On the oth­er hand, the professor’s pop­u­lar­i­ty with the mass­es is because he is not under­stood.” Yet anoth­er ver­sion, cir­cu­lat­ing on the Nobel Prize’s Insta­gram and col­lect­ing tens of thou­sands of likes, has the exchange take place in a dia­logue.

Ein­stein: “What I most admire about your art, is your uni­ver­sal­i­ty. You don’t say a word, yet the world under­stands you!”

Chap­lin: “True. But your glo­ry is even greater! The whole world admires you, even though they don’t under­stand a word of what you say.”

What­ev­er they real­ly said to each oth­er, it’s clear Ein­stein saw some­thing in Char­lie Chap­lin worth emu­lat­ing. Chap­lin left his mark on Exis­ten­tial­ist phi­los­o­phy, lend­ing the name of his film Mod­ern Times to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s influ­en­tial jour­nal, Les Temps Mod­ernes. He left a lega­cy on Beat poet­ry, lend­ing the name City Lights to Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s infa­mous San Fran­cis­co book­store and pub­lish­er. And it seems he also maybe had some small effect on physics, or on the most famous of physi­cists, who might have har­bored a secret ambi­tion to be a silent film comedian—or to com­mu­ni­cate, at least, with the uni­ver­sal effec­tive­ness of one as skilled as Char­lie Chap­lin, favorite of genius­es and grand­moth­ers (and genius grand­moth­ers) every­where.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

60+ Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

Einstein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Explained in One of the Ear­li­est Sci­ence Films Ever Made (1923)

Hear Albert Ein­stein Read “The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence” (1941)

The Char­lie Chap­lin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Pho­tos & Doc­u­ments from the Life of the Icon­ic Film Star

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Power of Pulp Fiction’s Dance Scene, Explained by Choreographers and Even John Travolta Himself

in Dance, Film | December 29th, 2020

All the great movies have a few mem­o­rable scenes; Pulp Fic­tion is made of noth­ing but. More than a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago, that film’s release turned a young video-store clerk-turned-auteur called Quentin Taran­ti­no into a house­hold name. Cinephiles today still argue about which is the most mem­o­rable among its scenes, and only the most con­trar­i­an could fail to con­sid­er the dance. It comes ear­ly in the film, when the hit­man Vin­cent Vega takes his boss’ wife out to din­ner, the absent king­pin hav­ing ordered him to do so. The two eat at an elab­o­rate­ly 1950s-themed din­er and on a whim enter its twist con­test. They walk off the dance floor with a tro­phy — as well as a cou­ple decades’ influ­ence on pop­u­lar cul­ture.

“The twist was made famous in the 60s,” explains chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Lau­ren Yalan­go-Grant in the Van­i­ty Fair video just above. “There were a lot of vari­a­tions that came out of the twist that we do see in this scene,” such as “the mon­key,” “the swim,” and “the Bat­man,” bet­ter known as “the Batusi.”

As bust­ed by John Tavol­ta and Uma Thur­man, all these moves come out in an impro­vi­sa­tion­al fash­ion, each in response to the last: “If John starts to do the Bat­man, then Uma’s going to ‘yes-and’ it with not only a Bat­man but an open palm, her own ver­sion of this move,” adds chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Christo­pher Grant. Their move­ments give the scene a great deal of its impact, but so does those move­ments’ incon­gruity with their expres­sions, which Yalan­go-Grant calls “the jux­ta­po­si­tion of their seri­ous­ness and the lack of play on their faces ver­sus the play in their bod­ies.”

Though now cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly icon­ic in its own right, Pulp Fic­tion’s dance scene pays homage to a host of old­er films. The most obvi­ous is Jean-Luc Godard­’s Bande à part, with what Yalan­go-Grant calls its “amaz­ing dance sequence in a cafe. It’s total­ly out of con­text, of nowhere.” Nev­er shy to admit his acts of artis­tic “theft,” Taran­ti­no once com­plained that too few picked up this one: “Every­body thinks that I wrote this scene just to have John Tra­vol­ta danc­ing. But the scene exist­ed before John Tra­vol­ta was cast.” The direc­tor’s inten­tion, rather, was to pay trib­ute to his favorite musi­cal sequences, which “have always been in Godard, because they just come out of nowhere. It’s so infec­tious, so friend­ly. And the fact that it’s not a musi­cal, but he’s stop­ping the movie to have a musi­cal sequence, makes it all the more sweet.”

The cast­ing of Tra­vol­ta (Taran­ti­no’s “strong, strong, strong sec­ond choice” for Vin­cent Vega) proved for­tu­itous. The very image of the man danc­ing made for yet anoth­er chap­ter of pop cul­ture from which the film could draw, but with­out his real-life danc­ing skills and instincts, the scene would­n’t have been as mem­o­rable as it is. “Quentin was dead-set on both of us doing the twist, which is a very fun dance, but it’s lim­it­ed in how long one wants to watch some­one do the twist,” Tra­vol­ta remem­bers on a recent appear­ance on The Late Late Show with James Cor­den. So he told the direc­tor, “When I was grow­ing up, there were nov­el­ty dances. There were dances like the swim and the Bat­man and the hitch­hik­er and the tight­en up. Maybe we should widen the spec­trum on this.” Taran­ti­no’s unwill­ing­ness to com­pro­mise his ambi­tions and obses­sions has made him per­haps the most acclaimed film­mak­er of his gen­er­a­tion, but so has know­ing when to defer to the star of Sat­ur­day Night Fever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives Sneak Peek of Pulp Fic­tion to Jon Stew­art in 1994

Quentin Tarantino’s Orig­i­nal Wish List for the Cast of Pulp Fic­tion

The Music in Quentin Tarantino’s Films: Hear a 5‑Hour, 100-Song Playlist

An Analy­sis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Nar­rat­ed (Most­ly) by Quentin Taran­ti­no

How Anna Kari­na (RIP) Became the Mes­mer­iz­ing Face of the French New Wave

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Peter Jackson Gives Us an Enticing Glimpse of His Upcoming Beatles Documentary The Beatles: Get Back

in Film, Music | December 22nd, 2020

The leg­endary acri­mo­ny of the Bea­t­les’ break-up comes through in Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 film Let it Be, which doc­u­ments the record­ing of their last stu­dio album and their famous rooftop send­off con­cert, joined by key­boardist Bil­ly Pre­ston. Things got so tense that George Har­ri­son left the band dur­ing the ses­sions. He lat­er called them “the low of all time.” Lennon went fur­ther: “hell… the most mis­er­able ses­sions on earth.”

Though some of the worst moments of those ses­sions were cut in edit­ing, there’s no doubt Lind­say-Hogg built the film around stu­dio dra­ma instead of “the monot­o­nies, the lack­lus­ter worka­day yawns, of four peo­ple who know each oth­er too well,” wrote Jonathan Cot and David Dal­ton in a 1970 Rolling Stone review. “We only get a few moments because with 300 hours of footage, only the high­lights, the more dra­mat­ic scenes, and the fun­nier dia­logue are shown.”

In the film, the band ends their last per­for­mance togeth­er with “Get Back,” then Lennon famous­ly jokes, “I hope we’ve passed the audi­tion.” Let it Be, Cott and Dal­ton revealed, was orig­i­nal­ly titled Get Back, the name Peter Jackson—yes that Peter Jackson—has cho­sen for his upcom­ing Bea­t­les film, which will final­ly see the light next year, after the COVID delays that have slowed down every pro­duc­tion.

Build­ing on the archival and restora­tion skills he refined dur­ing the mak­ing of They Shall Not Grow Old, Jack­son and his team have combed through those hun­dreds of hours of film, cut­ting togeth­er 56 hours of “nev­er-before-seen footage,” notes Bren­na Ehrlich at Rolling Stone. “The film promis­es to be ‘the ulti­mate ‘fly on the wall’ expe­ri­ence that Bea­t­les fans have long dreamt about,’” as Jack­son says. “We get to sit in the stu­dio watch­ing these four friends make great music togeth­er.”

The film will also “present a much sun­nier vision of the Bea­t­les’ breakup” and has been made with the full per­mis­sion of sur­viv­ing mem­bers Paul McCart­ney and Ringo Starr as well as Yoko Ono and George Harrison’s wife Olivia. As Starr put it, “There were hours and hours of us just laugh­ing and play­ing music, not at all like the ver­sion that came out. There was a lot of joy and I think Peter will show that. I think this ver­sion will be a lot more peace and lov­ing, like we real­ly were.”

As if to prove the point, McCart­ney, who just dropped his lat­est album, McCart­ney III, tweet­ed out the five-minute clip above yes­ter­day, in which Jack­son intro­duces what he calls a “mon­tage” from the film’s edit­ing process so far. The vivid life­like­ness of the images is a result of Jackson’s dig­i­tal pro­cess­ing, and it does not seem intru­sive. What stands out most of all is the joy the band clear­ly still took in each other’s com­pa­ny, “just laugh­ing and play­ing music,” as Ringo remem­bered. Get Back is slat­ed for release in the­aters on August, 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

How Peter Jack­son Made His State-of-the-Art World War I Doc­u­men­tary, They Shall Not Grow Old: An Inside Look

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

When the Bea­t­les Refused to Play Before Seg­re­gat­ed Audi­ences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

How “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Con­tains “the Cra­zi­est Edit” in Bea­t­les His­to­ry

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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When Martin Scorsese Directed Michael Jackson in the 18-Minute “Bad” Music Video & Paid Cinematic Tribute to West Side Story (1986)

in Film | December 18th, 2020

In 1983, Michael Jackson’s Thriller was the biggest album in the world, and he was the biggest pop star. And then he was expect­ed to top it. But could he? The mount­ing pres­sures of fame and mon­ey, his falling out with his fam­i­ly over the Jack­sons tour, and his per­fec­tion­ist sta­tus as a musi­cian meant the fol­low-up album kept being pushed back fur­ther and fur­ther. He became more reclu­sive and strange-look­ing, and went from being a sex sym­bol to being the butt of jokes. And in the back­ground of all that was his increas­ing addic­tion to pain killers, which had start­ed after a mal­func­tion­ing pyrotech­nic burned his scalp to the bone.

Mean­while his clos­est com­peti­tor, Prince, had been releas­ing an album a year since 1999. And, in 1986, as this Spin pro­file men­tions, the two met for an odd, most­ly-silent “sum­mit.” What­ev­er was said, it spurred Jack­son to final­ly fin­ish his next album.

Jack­son had worked with John Lan­dis on the “Thriller” video, and then with Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la for Cap­tain EO, but for the title track off of his come­back album, he hired Mar­tin Scors­ese to direct, work­ing from a script by Richard Price. Scors­ese and Price had just worked togeth­er on The Col­or of Mon­ey, and the latter’s script was orig­i­nal­ly about a pri­vate school kid who gets killed in a Harlem shootout. A lot of that is still there in the fin­ished full video, although the mur­der is not. Instead, Jack­son turns the “Bad” music video into some­thing mul­ti­lay­ered.

For Scors­ese it allowed him to mix the street real­ism of his clas­sic New York City tales, and to indulge in a musi­cal num­ber with its sev­er­al nods to West Side Sto­ry. Scorsese’s orig­i­nal film clocks in at over 18 min­utes and it takes until half-way for the music video to begin, when the black’n’white real­ism gives way to col­or, and typ­i­cal NYC win­ter wear turns into b‑boy dance attire, includ­ing Jackson’s black buck­le jack­et. Chore­o­graphed by Jack­son along­side Gregg Burge and Jef­frey Daniel, with input from Geron ‘Caszper’ Can­di­date, the team cre­at­ed a per­for­mance that is a col­lage of styles, from Jerome Rob­bins’ musi­cal the­ater dance to moves from the days of Soul Train (Daniel and Burge had both been fea­tured per­form­ers), to Jackson’s own idio­syn­crat­ic moves. Scors­ese was there to cap­ture it all with his always-mov­ing cam­era.

Also of note is the debut of Wes­ley Snipes, play­ing the antag­o­nist Mini Max. There are few actors who can take a sec­ondary role in a music video and make it stand out, but Snipes’ per­for­mance was so pow­er­ful, audi­ences and cast­ing direc­tors took notice.

And while most broad­casts of the video end with the final line of the song, the orig­i­nal film ends with a most amaz­ing sequence. Jack­son sings a capel­la, while his back­up dancers repeat his impro­vi­sa­tion, a call and response straight out of gospel music, caught on three cam­eras in one take. This scene, even more than the sur­round­ing video, is Jack­son plac­ing him­self in the his­to­ry of Black enter­tain­ment, call­ing up the pow­er of James Brown and Mavis Sta­ples (from whom he got “sha­mone”) and numer­ous oth­er singers. It was the rawest he had even been, and you can see all the ten­sion of those four pre­vi­ous years spill out. He wasn’t a freak show or an oddity—he was part of a tra­di­tion that reached back through the 20th cen­tu­ry, a lin­eage that the doc­u­men­tary makes clear.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” Video Changed Pop Cul­ture For­ev­er: Revis­it the 13-Minute Short Film Direct­ed by John Lan­dis

How Michael Jack­son Wrote a Song: A Close Look at How the King of Pop Craft­ed “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”

The Ori­gins of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk: Vin­tage Footage of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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What Makes for a Beloved Bad Film? Jackey Neyman Jones (Manos: The Hands of Fate) Talks to Pretty Much Pop (ep. 73)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | December 17th, 2020

While there have of course been numer­ous attempts at movie mag­ic that have result­ed in some­thing less than audi­ence pleas­ing, only a few demon­strate such bold inep­ti­tude as to become “so bad that they’re good.” Such a film requires a strong sense of vision cou­pled with a com­plete inabil­i­ty to real­ize that vision in a coher­ent way, and it must dis­play real charm, as we see through the pre­sen­ta­tion to behold real human beings cap­tured in the poignan­cy of their doomed filmic endeav­or.

Some often cit­ed can­di­dates for this new kind of film canon include the clas­sic Plan 9 from Out­er Space, whose cre­ation was dra­ma­tized in Tim Bur­ton’s film Ed Wood; Tom­my Wiseau’s The Room, chron­i­cled by the book and film The Dis­as­ter Artist; Troll 2, a film that has no busi­ness or cre­ative rela­tion to the already dubi­ous film Troll that was doc­u­ment­ed in Best Worst Movie; and the an up-and-com­er Bir­d­em­ic: Shock and Ter­ror, self-financed by James Nguyen, whose pop­u­lar­i­ty great­ly increased through the treat­ment of his films by Riff­trax, one of the TV show Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000’s Inter­net suc­ces­sors.

And then there’s Manos: The Hands of Fate, laud­ed as one of the most trip­py finds of the orig­i­nal 1993 MST3K. It’s a film writ­ten, direct­ed by, and star­ring (lit­er­al) fer­til­iz­er sales­man Harold P. War­ren about a fam­i­ly (on their “first vaca­tion”) get­ting lost in West­ern Texas and end­ing up stay­ing the night at a house with a reli­gious cult. Jack­ey Ney­man Jones played the six-year-old girl in the film who even­tu­al­ly (spoil­er!) ends up tied to a stake as the cult lead­er’s sev­enth wife. Her father played the cult leader and cre­at­ed much of the art for the show, her moth­er sewed the cos­tumes, and her voice was dubbed over by a ful­ly grown woman who was not at all warned that she’d be hav­ing to imi­tate a child’s voice.

Jack­ey wrote a mem­oir about the expe­ri­ence, and here joins your Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca, Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to talk about the ongo­ing inter­est in the film despite its ini­tial, com­plete dis­missal as well as the dynam­ics and per­ils of work­ing with a supreme­ly con­fi­dent “auteur.”

The dis­cus­sion also touch­es on oth­er bad films like Cat­woman, The Hap­pen­ing, and Bat­tle­ship. Are these con­tem­po­rary, big-bud­get flops wor­thy of such can­on­iza­tion? What about films made inten­tion­al­ly to be cheesy, whether by auteurs like Veloci­pas­tor or pumped out by a com­pa­ny like Syfy’s Shark­na­do series?

You can watch Jack­ey read her entire book online. See her art. Read her inter­viewed in Cracked, Enter­tain­ment Week­ly, and the AV Club. Check out her IMDB page and her short-lived Hand of Hor­ror pod­cast. Manos: The Hands of Fate is in the pub­lic domain, so watch it unriffed if you dare, or check out the clas­sic MST3K episode or the more recent Riff­trax treat­ment. See also the warped stage ver­sion with pup­pets: Manos: The Hands of Felt.

To think more gen­er­al­ly about this top­ic, we con­sult­ed some lists of bad (or “so-bad-they’re-good”) films by The Ringer,  Thril­list, Screen­rant, Yard­bark­er, and Wikipedia.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Get Inside the Head of a New York City Christmas Tree: A Gonzo Short Film from Artist Nina Katchadourian

in Art, Film, Life | December 16th, 2020

For every year this Christ­mas tree

Brings to us such joy and glee

O Christ­mas tree, O Christ­mas tree

Such plea­sure do you bring me…

All over New York City, tree stands are spring­ing up like mush­rooms.

Unlike the fan­ci­ful win­dows lin­ing 5th avenue, the Union Square hol­i­day mar­ket, or Rock­e­feller Center’s tree and skat­ing rink, this sea­son­al plea­sure requires no spe­cial trip, no threat of crowds.

You could bat­tle traf­fic, and lose half a day, drag­ging the kids to a cut-your-own farm on Long Island or in New Jer­sey, but why, when the side­walk stands are so fes­tive, so con­ve­nient, so quin­tes­sen­tial­ly New York?

The ven­dors hail from as far away as Ver­mont and Cana­da, shiv­er­ing in lawn chairs and mobile homes 24–7.

What befalls the unsold trees on Christ­mas Eve?

No one knows. They van­ish along with the ven­dors by Christ­mas morn­ing.

The spon­ta­neous coop­er­a­tion of two such ven­dors was crit­i­cal to artist Nina Katchadourian’s “Tree Shove,” above.

Katchadouri­an, who may look famil­iar to you from Lava­to­ry Self-Por­traits in the Flem­ish Style, recalls:

My friend Andrew had been hear­ing me say for years that I want­ed to be shoved through one of those things and he found two friend­ly Cana­di­ans sell­ing Christ­mas trees in a Brook­lyn super­mar­ket park­ing lot and worked it out with them.

The result is high­ly acces­si­ble, gonzo per­for­mance art from an artist who always lets the pub­lic in on the joke.

Add it to your annu­al hol­i­day spe­cial playlist.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Artist Nina Katchadouri­an Cre­ates Flem­ish Style Self-Por­traits in Air­plane Lava­to­ry

Watch The Insects’ Christ­mas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Star­ring a Cast of Dead Bugs

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed Christ­mas Cards That Were Too Avant Garde for Hall­mark (1960)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Art of Movie Posters: View Online 40,000+ Movie Posters & Learn How They’re Made

in Art, Film | December 15th, 2020

If you can’t judge a movie by its poster, it’s not for the poster design­er’s lack of try­ing. Near­ly as ven­er­a­ble as cin­e­ma itself, the art of the movie poster has evolved to attract the atten­tion and inter­est of gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of film­go­ers — and, safe to say, devel­oped a few best prac­tices along the way. Some exam­ples go beyond effec­tive adver­tise­ment to become icons in and of them­selves: take for exam­ple, the poster for Quentin Taran­ti­no’s Pulp Fic­tion, designed by James Verdes­o­to. In the Van­i­ty Fair video above, Verdes­o­to draws on a vari­ety of “one-sheets” in order to explain a few of the tricks of the trade.


Like any cul­tur­al arti­fact, movie posters are sub­ject to trend and fash­ion. It just hap­pens that trends and fash­ions in movie poster design can last for decades, with each revival bring­ing an under­ly­ing aes­thet­ic con­cept back into the zeit­geist in a new way. Sure­ly you’ll recall a few years, not long ago, when every major com­e­dy seemed to stamp bold red text on a pure white back­ground: Amer­i­can Pie, the remakes of Cheap­er by the Dozen, and The Heart­break Kid, even the likes of Nor­bit.

This has been going on at least since the 1980s, as Verdes­o­to shows by pulling out the poster for John Hugh­es’ beloved Planes, Trains, and Auto­mo­biles, then com­par­ing it to the con­cep­tu­al­ly sim­i­lar one for Meet the Par­ents to note dif­fer­ences in the use of fonts, pho­tographs, and neg­a­tive space.

Since The Firm, thrillers have often been sig­naled with hunt­ed-look­ing men run­ning down blue-toned cor­ri­dors or streets, often in sil­hou­ette; a great many explo­sive action movies since Die Hard have gone in for black-and-white posters that empha­size slash­es of red or orange. Even the non-genre of “inde­pen­dent films,” often mod­est of mar­ket­ing bud­get, have their own col­or: canary yel­low “a cheap way to catch the eye.” Case in point: Vin­cent Gal­lo’s The Brown Bun­ny, a noto­ri­ous film that also hap­pened to come with one of the most mem­o­rable posters of the 2000s, due not just to its yel­low back­ground but because its con­scious ref­er­ence to Euro­pean designs of the 1950s and 60s, such as the one for Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nion­i’s Blow-Up.

You can behold (and in some cas­es even down­load) count­less many works of movie-poster art, from a vari­ety of decades and a vari­ety of nations, at the sites of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter and the New York movie poster gallery Pos­ter­i­tati. Here on Open Cul­ture we’ve also fea­tured Taschen’s book of dynam­ic movie posters of the Russ­ian avant-garde, online archives of the famous­ly artis­tic movie posters of Poland and Czecho­slo­va­kia, not to men­tion com­pelling­ly odd hand-paint­ed movie posters from Ghana. Spend enough time with all of them, and you may find your­self pos­sessed of enough of an intel­lec­tu­al invest­ment in this thor­ough­ly mod­ern art form to start invest­ing in a gen­uine col­lec­tion of your own. But no mat­ter your enthu­si­asm for movie posters, it’ll be a while before you catch up with Mar­tin Scors­ese.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10,000 Clas­sic Movie Posters Get­ting Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin: Free to Browse & Down­load

40,000 Film Posters in a Won­der­ful­ly Eclec­tic Archive: Ital­ian Tarkovsky Posters, Japan­ese Orson Welles, Czech Woody Allen & Much More

50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

An Archive of 20,000 Movie Posters from Czecho­slo­va­kia (1930–1989)

Graph­ic Design­er Redesigns a Movie Poster Every Day, for One Year: Scar­face, Mul­hol­land Dr., The Grad­u­ate, Ver­ti­go, The Life Aquat­ic and 360 More

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed Exclu­sive­ly to Poster Art Opens Its Doors in the U.S.: Enter the Poster House

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Are You Happy, David Lynch?

in Film, Life | December 9th, 2020

Film­mak­er David Lynch answers a basic life ques­tion from Mary Anne Hobbs, BBC Radio 6 DJ, dur­ing a fan Q&A. The accom­pa­ny­ing video appar­ent­ly comes from The Art Life doc­u­men­tary trail­er.

The source of Lynch’s hap­pi­ness? Most like­ly med­i­ta­tion. Find more on that below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Boosts Our Cre­ativ­i­ty (Plus Free Resources to Help You Start Med­i­tat­ing)

David Lynch Visu­al­izes How Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion Works with Sharpie & Big Pad of Paper

David Lynch Mus­es About the Mag­ic of Cin­e­ma & Med­i­ta­tion in a New Abstract Short Film

David Lynch Cre­ates a Very Sur­re­al Plug for Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion

An Ani­mat­ed David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

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