David Bowie: The Last Five Years Is Now Airing/Streaming on HBO

in Film, Music | January 10th, 2018


FYI: David Bowie died two years ago today. And to com­mem­o­rate the anniver­sary, HBO has just start­ed air­ing David Bowie: The Last Five Years, a 90-minute BBC doc­u­men­tary that revis­its Bowie’s less pub­lic final years. If you don’t already have HBO, you could always watch the doc by sign­ing up for a free tri­al for HBO Now (HBO’s stream­ing ser­vice). Here’s a quick summary/overview of the film:

In the last years of his life, David Bowie end­ed near­ly a decade of silence to engage in an extra­or­di­nary burst of activ­i­ty, pro­duc­ing two ground­break­ing albums and a musi­cal. David Bowie: The Last Five Years explores this unex­pect­ed end to a remark­able career.

On the 2003–2004 “Real­i­ty” tour, David Bowie had a fright­en­ing brush with mor­tal­i­ty, suf­fer­ing a heart attack dur­ing what was to be his final full con­cert. He then dis­ap­peared from pub­lic view, only re-emerg­ing in the last five years of his life to make some of the most impor­tant music of his career. Made with remark­able access, Fran­cis Whately’s doc­u­men­tary is a rev­e­la­to­ry fol­low-up to his acclaimed 2013 doc­u­men­tary David Bowie: Five Years, which chron­i­cled Bowie’s gold­en ‘70s and early-‘80s peri­od.

While illu­mi­nat­ing icon­ic moments of his extra­or­di­nary and pro­lif­ic career, David Bowie: The Last Five Years focus­es on three major projects: the albums The Next Day and the jazz-infused Black­star (released on Bowie’s 69th birth­day, two days before his death in 2016), and the musi­cal Lazarus, which was inspired by the char­ac­ter he played in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Dis­pelling the sim­plis­tic view that his career was sim­ply pred­i­cat­ed on change, the film includes reveal­ing inter­views with many of Bowie’s clos­est cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tors, includ­ing: Tony Vis­con­ti, Bowie’s long-time pro­duc­er; musi­cians who con­tributed to The Next Day and Black­star; Jonathan Barn­brook, the graph­ic design­er of both albums; Robert Fox, pro­duc­er of Lazarus, along with cast mem­bers from the show, pro­vid­ing a unique behind-the-scenes look at Bowie’s cre­ative process; and Johan Renck, direc­tor of Bowie’s final music video, “Lazarus,” which was wide­ly dis­cussed as fore­shad­ow­ing his death.

You can watch a trail­er for the new film up above.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

The David Bowie Book Club Gets Launched by His Son: Read One of Bowie’s 100 Favorite Books Every Month

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Bowie Urges Kids to READ in a 1987 Poster Spon­sored by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion

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A Supercut of Buster Keaton’s Most Amazing Stunts

in Comedy, Film, Writing | January 8th, 2018

Joseph Frank Keaton was born into show­biz. His father was a come­di­an. His moth­er, a soubrette. He emerged into the world dur­ing a one night engage­ment in Kansas City. His father’s busi­ness part­ner, escape artist Har­ry Hou­di­ni, inad­ver­tent­ly renamed him Buster, approv­ing of the way the rub­bery lit­tle Keaton weath­ered an acci­den­tal tum­ble down a flight of stairs.

As Keaton recalls in the inter­view accom­pa­ny­ing silent movie fan Don McHoull’s edit of some of his most amaz­ing stunts, above:

My old man was an eccen­tric com­ic and as soon as I could take care of myself at all on my feet, he had slapped shoes on me and big bag­gy pants. And he’d just start doing gags with me and espe­cial­ly kickin’ me clean across the stage or tak­ing me by the back of the neck and throw­ing me. By the time I got up to around sev­en or eight years old, we were called The Rough­est Act That Was Ever in the His­to­ry of the Stage. 

By the time of his first film role in the 1917 Roscoe “Fat­ty” Arbuck­le vehi­cle, The Butch­er Boy, Keaton was a sea­soned clown, with plen­ty of expe­ri­ence string­ing phys­i­cal gags into an enter­tain­ing nar­ra­tive whole.

Like his silent peers, Harold Lloyd and Char­lie Chap­lin, Keaton was an idea man, who saw no need for a script. Armed with a firm con­cept of how the film should begin and end, he rolled cam­eras with­out much idea of how the mid­dle would turn out, fine tun­ing his phys­i­cal set pieces on the fly, scrap­ping the ones that didn’t work and embrac­ing the hap­py acci­dents.

Could such an approach work for today’s come­di­ans? In lat­er inter­views, Keaton was gen­er­ous toward oth­er com­e­dy pro­fes­sion­als who got their laughs via meth­ods he steered clear of, from Bob Hope’s wordi­ness to direc­tor Bil­ly Wilder’s deft han­dling of Some Like It Hot’s far­ci­cal cross-dress­ing. His was nev­er a one-size-fits-all phi­los­o­phy.

Per­haps it’s more help­ful to think of his approach as an anti­dote to cre­ative block and timid­i­ty. We’ve cob­bled togeth­er some of his advice, below, in the hope that it might prove use­ful to sto­ry­tellers of all stripes.

Buster Keaton’s 5 Rules of Com­ic Sto­ry­telling

Make a strong start - grab the audi­ence with a dynam­ic, easy to grasp premise, like the one in 1920’s One Week, which finds a new­ly­wed Buster strug­gling to assem­ble a house from a do-it-your­self kit.

Decide how you want things to fin­ish up - for Keaton, this usu­al­ly involved get­ting the girl, though he learned to keep a pok­er face after a pre­view audi­ence booed the broad grin he tried out in one of Arbuckle’s shorts. Once you know where your story’s going, trust that the mid­dle will take care of itself.

If it’s not work­ing, cut it — Keaton may not have had a script, but he invest­ed a lot of thought into the phys­i­cal set pieces of his films. If it didn’t work as well as he hoped in exe­cu­tion, he cut it loose. If some serendip­i­tous sna­fu turned out to be fun­nier than the intend­ed gag, he put that in instead.

Play it like it mat­ters to you. As many a begin­ning improv stu­dent finds out, if you let your own mate­r­i­al crack you up, the audi­ence is rarely inclined to laugh along. Why set­tle for low stakes and dif­fi­dence, when high stakes and com­mit­ment are so much fun­nier?

Action over words Whether deal­ing with dia­logue or expo­si­tion, Keaton strove to min­i­mize the inter­ti­tles in his silent work. Show, don’t tell.

Films excerpt­ed at top:

Three Ages
Cops
Day Dreams
Sher­lock Jr.
One Week
Hard Luck
Neigh­bors
The Gen­er­al
Steam­boat Bill, Jr.
Sev­en Chances
Our Hos­pi­tal­i­ty
The Bell

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Buster Keaton: The Won­der­ful Gags of the Found­ing Father of Visu­al Com­e­dy

Some of Buster Keaton’s Great, Death-Defy­ing Stunts Cap­tured in Ani­mat­ed Gifs

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist Direc­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

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 Movements of a Symphony Conductor Get Artistically Visualized in an Avant-Garde Motion Capture Animation

in Animation, Computer Science, Film, Music, Technology | January 5th, 2018

Some clas­si­cal music enthu­si­asts are purists with regard to visu­al effects, lis­ten­ing with eyes firm­ly fixed on lin­er notes or the ceil­ings of grand con­cert halls.

Those open to a more avant-garde ocu­lar expe­ri­ence may enjoy the short motion cap­ture ani­ma­tion above.

Moti­vat­ed by the Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra’s desire for a hip­per iden­ti­ty, the project hinged on recent­ly appoint­ed Musi­cal Direc­tor Sir Simon Rat­tle’s will­ing­ness to con­duct Edward Elgar’s Enig­ma Vari­a­tions with a spe­cial­ly mod­i­fied baton, while 12 top-of-the-range Vicon Van­tage cam­eras not­ed his every move at 120 frames per sec­ond.

Dig­i­tal design­er Tobias Gremm­ler, who’s pre­vi­ous­ly used motion-cap­ture ani­ma­tion as a lens through which to con­sid­er kung fu and Chi­nese Opera, stuck with musi­cal metaphors in ani­mat­ing Sir Simon’s data with Cin­e­ma 4D soft­ware. The move­ments of con­duc­tor and baton morph into a “vor­tex of wood, brass, smoke and strings” and “wires rem­i­nis­cent of the strings of the instru­ments them­selves.” Else­where, he draws on the atmos­phere and archi­tec­ture of clas­sic con­cert halls.

(The unini­ti­at­ed may find them­selves flash­ing on less rar­i­fied sources of inspi­ra­tion, from lava lamps and fire danc­ing to the 80’s‑era dig­i­tal uni­verse of Tron.)

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Grace­ful Move­ments of Kung Fu & Mod­ern Dance Revealed in Stun­ning Motion Visu­al­iza­tions

Visu­al­iz­ing WiFi Sig­nals with Light

The Entire Dis­ci­pline of Phi­los­o­phy Visu­al­ized with Map­ping Soft­ware: See All of the Com­plex Net­works

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

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An Innocent Christmas Typo Causes Sir Patrick Stewart to Star as Satan In This Animated Holiday Short

in Animation, Comedy, Film, Theatre | December 25th, 2017

In cer­tain sec­tors, over-the-top ad agency greet­ings are as much a part of the hol­i­day sea­son as A Christ­mas Car­ol and How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas!.

Anom­aly Lon­don put in their thumb and pulled out a plum when Sir Patrick Stew­art agreed to voice their lat­est effort, above.

And what bet­ter way to top his cel­e­brat­ed turn as Ebe­neez­er Scrooge than by tack­ling the most Christmas‑y role of them all?

San­ta, is that you?

No, dear child, ’tis Satan, sum­moned by an inno­cent mis-spelling on the part of a young girl eager for a Christ­mas pup­py.

When the post office deliv­ers her sim­i­lar­ly mis­ad­dressed enve­lope to hell by Decem­ber 25, the buff and tat­tooed Lord of Dark­ness’ heart grows three sizes. Every­one likes to be told they’re spe­cial.

Next thing you know, he’s trad­ed the fiery fur­nace for a gluten-free bak­ery in Shored­itch, where he’s a hap­py team play­er, mak­ing lat­te art and wear­ing a goofy cap.

The end­ing is a sweet mix of “I hate you, you ruined Christ­mas, go to hell!” and “God bless us every­one.” San­ta doesn’t sur­vive, but the child­like capac­i­ty for won­der does.

Those with sen­si­tive stom­achs may want to go easy on the eggnog while watch­ing this soon-to-be-hol­i­day clas­sic. The pro­jec­tile vom­it­ing rivals the Exor­cist’s.

And hap­py hol­i­days from all of us at Open Cul­ture!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear The Cin­na­mon Bear, the Clas­sic Hol­i­day Radio Series That Has Aired Between Thanks­giv­ing and Christ­mas for 80 Years

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

Sir Patrick Stew­art & Sir Ian McK­ellen Play The New­ly­wed Game

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

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Watch Santa Claus, the Earliest Movie About Santa in Existence (1898)

in Film, History | December 25th, 2017

San­ta Claus Is Comin’ to Town, The San­ta Clause, San­ta Claus: the Movie, Bad San­ta, the unfor­get­table San­ta Claus Con­quers the Mar­tians: we all have a pre­ferred depic­tion of Saint Nicholas on film, the selec­tion of which grows larg­er each and every Christ­mas. The tra­di­tion of San­ta in cin­e­ma goes back 120 years to a cou­ple of obscure 1897 shorts, San­ta Claus Fill­ing Stock­ings and The Christ­mas Tree Par­ty, made by a com­pa­ny called Amer­i­can Muto­scope, but it finds its fullest ear­ly expres­sion in the fol­low­ing year’s San­ta Claus.

Direct­ed by hyp­no­tist and mag­ic lanternist turned film­mak­er George Albert Smith, this 66-sec­ond pro­duc­tion, though a high­ly elab­o­rate one for the time, pur­ports to show just how San­ta Claus makes a vis­it to drop off gifts for a cou­ple of sleep­ing chil­dren. When their nan­ny turns off the lights for the night, we see super­im­posed on their dark­ened wall a vision of the jol­ly old elf him­self land­ing on the roof and clam­ber­ing down the chim­ney.

“What makes this treat­ment con­sid­er­ably more inter­est­ing than a con­ven­tion­al piece of edit­ing,” writes the British Film Insti­tute’s Michael Brooke, “is the way that Smith links the shots in terms of both space and time, by plac­ing the new image over the space pre­vi­ous­ly occu­pied by the fire­place, and con­tin­u­ing to show the chil­dren sleep­ing through­out.”

Brooke calls that effect “cin­e­ma’s ear­li­est known exam­ple of par­al­lel action and, when cou­pled with dou­ble-expo­sure tech­niques” that Smith had devel­oped for his pre­vi­ous films, it makes San­ta Claus “one of the most visu­al­ly and con­cep­tu­al­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed British films made up to then.” He notes also that Smith cor­re­spond­ed with Georges Méliès, his fel­low pio­neer of not just spe­cial effects but cin­e­ma itself, around the time of this film, no sur­prise since “the two men shared a com­mon goal in terms of cre­at­ing an authen­tic cin­e­ma of illu­sion.”

Watch San­ta Claus on this Christ­mas Day, and you’ll find that, in the words of Kieron Casey at The Total­i­ty, “the plot is sim­ple, but the mag­ic is not — viewed over 100 years lat­er, it’s impos­si­ble not to be touched to the very core with the won­der on dis­play in the film. In the same way young hands will find the most sim­ple of toys mes­meris­ing when touched for the first time, there is a real inno­cence and enthu­si­asm in G.A. Smith’s film – it’s a short movie which is full of imag­i­na­tion and dis­cov­ery, the type of which will nev­er again be expe­ri­enced in cin­e­ma.” But see­ing as San­ta Claus exist­ed long before cin­e­ma and will exist long after it, rest assured that he’ll bring his trade­mark twin­kle to any sto­ry­telling medi­um human­i­ty comes up with next.

San­ta Claus will be added to our list of Clas­sic Silent Films, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Christ­mas Car­ol Pre­sent­ed in a Thomas Edi­son Film (1910)

Cap­ti­vat­ing GIFs Reveal the Mag­i­cal Spe­cial Effects in Clas­sic Silent Films

A Trip to the Moon (and Five Oth­er Free Films) by Georges Méliès, the Father of Spe­cial Effects

Watch the Films of the Lumière Broth­ers & the Birth of Cin­e­ma (1895)

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include 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 or on Face­book.

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How the Russian Theatre Director Constantin Stanislavski Revolutionized the Craft of Acting: A New Video Essay

in Film | December 21st, 2017

From Travis Lee Rat­cliff comes a video essay that explores the influ­ence of Con­stan­tin Stanislavs­ki, the Russ­ian the­atre direc­tor whose “sys­tem” of actor train­ing shaped a gen­er­a­tion of icon­ic Amer­i­can actors. Here’s how Rat­cliff sets the stage for his video essay.

In the 1950s, a wave of “method actors” took Hol­ly­wood by storm.

Actors like James Dean, Mar­lon Bran­do, and Mont­gomery Clift, brought a whole new toolset and per­spec­tive on the actor’s craft to the films they per­formed in.

The foun­da­tion of their work, how­ev­er, was laid in Rus­sia more than fifty years pri­or to their star­dom.

Stanislavski’s con­cep­tion of “psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism” in per­for­mance chal­lenged ideas about the essen­tial fea­tures of the actor’s craft that had been held for cen­turies.

In the­atre before Stanislavs­ki, act­ing was defined as a craft of vocal and ges­tur­al train­ing. The role the actor played was to give life to the emo­tions of the text in a broad illus­tra­tive fash­ion. For­mal cat­e­gories such as melo­dra­ma, opera, vaude­ville, and musi­cals, all played to this notion of the actor as chief rep­re­sen­ter of dra­mat­ic ideas.

Stanislavski’s key insight was in see­ing the actor as an expe­ri­encer of authen­tic emo­tion­al moments.

Sud­den­ly the craft of per­for­mance could be about seek­ing out a gen­uine inter­nal expe­ri­ence of the narrative’s emo­tion­al jour­ney.

From this foun­da­tion, real­ism in per­for­mance began to flour­ish. This not only changed our fun­da­men­tal idea of the actor but invit­ed a rein­ven­tion of the whole endeav­or of telling sto­ries through dra­ma.

Teach­ers would adopt Stanisvlaski’s meth­ods and ideas and elab­o­rate upon them in Amer­i­can the­atre schools. The result, in the 1950s, would be a new wave of actors and a style of act­ing that empha­sized psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism to a greater degree than their peers in motion pic­tures.

This idea of real­ism grew to dom­i­nate our notion of suc­cess­ful per­for­mances in cin­e­ma. Stanislavskian-real­ism is now cen­tral to the DNA of how we direct and read per­for­mances, whether we are con­scious of it or not.

I think it is impor­tant to know this his­to­ry and con­sid­er its rev­o­lu­tion­ary char­ac­ter. Under­stand­ing the nature of Stanislavski’s insights allows us to look at oth­er unasked ques­tions, oth­er foun­da­tion­al ele­ments of our craft that we might take for grant­ed.

Beyond this, Ratliff also pro­vides a list of Stanislavski’s books, which still pro­vide “fas­ci­nat­ing explo­rations of the craft of per­for­mance.” Check them out:

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Sovi­et Mon­tage The­o­ry: A Rev­o­lu­tion in Film­mak­ing

Mar­lon Bran­do Screen Tests for Rebel With­out A Cause (1947)

The James Dean Sto­ry: The Ear­ly Doc­u­men­tary by Robert Alt­man

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See Ridley Scott’s 1973 Bread Commercial—Voted England’s Favorite Advertisement of All Time

in Film, Television | December 14th, 2017

I have often thought that eat­ing some real­ly seri­ous brown bread is a bit like push­ing a bike up a very steep hill, a hill called “health.” So what a sur­prise to find that in 2006 a poll of 1,000 Britons vot­ed this 1973 ad for Hov­is bread as the Favorite British Com­mer­cial of All Time. And none oth­er than Rid­ley Scott direct­ed it. Indeed, this sto­ry of a young lad deliv­er­ing bread by bicy­cle up a steep cob­ble­stone min­ing-town street is laced through with nos­tal­gia and a sen­ti­men­tal use of Dvorak’s “New World” Sym­pho­ny. (So beloved is it that Brits often request the clas­si­cal work on radio as “the Hov­is music.”)

Before Rid­ley Scott became a block­buster film direc­tor, he cut his teeth by direct­ing episod­ic tele­vi­sion in the UK, and then form­ing an adver­tis­ing pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny with his broth­er Tony called RSA Films (Rid­ley Scott Asso­ciates). Accord­ing to Scott, he was involved in the pro­duc­tion of rough­ly 2,700 com­mer­cials over the company’s 10 years.

This icon­ic ad was one of sev­er­al he direct­ed that year for Hov­is, but this is the one that stuck. It might be the sim­plic­i­ty of the ad, the Sisyphean strug­gle of its young pro­tag­o­nist (who at least gets to eas­i­ly ride home), or any num­ber of fac­tors, but it would be a stretch to real­ly see the auteur in this film. If any­thing, it’s rem­i­nis­cent of his kitchen sink meets French New Wave short film from 1965, “Boy and Bicy­cle,” which is inter­est­ing more as an odd­i­ty and a star­ring vehi­cle for his broth­er than a great film.

The Inde­pen­dent tracked down the boy in the Hov­is ad, Carl Bar­low, who was 13 at the time, but is now 57 and a retired fire­fight­er.

“It was pure fate that I got the part as the Hov­is boy. I was down to the last three, and it turned out that one of the two boys could­n’t ride a bike, and the oth­er would­n’t cut his hair into the pud­ding bowl style — it was the Sev­en­ties after all. As the only boy who could ride a bike and would cut his hair, I got the part.”

This year, as part of an ad cam­paign for Evans Bicy­cles, Mr. Bar­low made his way to the top of the hill one more time, with the help of an elec­tric bike:

The orig­i­nal com­mer­cial is not Rid­ley Scott’s most famous one. That would go to his Apple Mac­in­tosh “1984” ad that screened dur­ing the Super Bowl. This list shows a few more that Scott direct­ed, into the 1990s.

Final­ly, an icon­ic com­mer­cial invites par­o­dy, and, in fact, cher­ished come­di­ans The Two Ron­nies made fun of the Hov­is ad in this brief skit from 1978.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rid­ley Scott Walks You Through His Favorite Scene from Blade Run­ner

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984” Com­mer­cial, Aired on Super Bowl Sun­day in 1984

How Rid­ley Scott Turned Footage From the Begin­ning of The Shin­ing Into the End of Blade Run­ner

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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The Proof That Mel Blanc–the Voice Behind Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck & Porky Pig–Was a Genius

in Animation, Comedy, Film | December 11th, 2017

Bugs Bun­ny is a tal­ent­ed mim­ic.

His effort­less imper­son­ations of the celebri­ties of his day are not always politic (see Al Jol­son) but  there’s no deny­ing that his impres­sions of Lib­er­ace, Edgar G. Robin­son, Bing Cros­by, and Hol­ly­wood Bowl con­duc­tor Leopold Stokows­ki intro­duced these per­son­ages to sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions.

Clear­ly he was not work­ing alone. In the 1981 inter­view with David Let­ter­man below, Mel Blanc, who voiced Bugs, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn and many oth­er ani­mat­ed favorites demon­strat­ed his ver­sa­til­i­ty.

Blanc shaped the char­ac­ters from the get go, invent­ing voic­es for char­ac­ter sketch­es and sto­ry­boards, though it was clear to him that tough nut Bugs should have an equal­ly tough  accent — either Brook­lyn or the Bronx. (Rather than split hairs, he invent­ed a hybrid.)

Hank Azaria, who is as cen­tral to The Simp­sons’ mythol­o­gy as Blanc is to Warn­er Broth­ers, mar­vels (up top) at Blanc’s abil­i­ty to mim­ic one char­ac­ter imi­tat­ing anoth­er, as Bugs and Daffy Duck do above.

Region­al­ism steered many of Blanc’s most mem­o­rable cre­ations, from Foghorn Leghon’s Texas drawl to French lover­boy, Pepe Le Pew.

Nice Mau­rice Cheva­lier, Bugs…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc

A Look Inside Mel Blanc’s Throat as He Per­forms the Voic­es of Bugs Bun­ny and Oth­er Car­toon Leg­ends

Kill the Wab­bit!: How the 1957 Bugs Bun­ny Car­toon, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Inspired Today’s Opera Singers to First Get Into Opera

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

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