John Lurie is a musician, actor and artist. He’s also a horrible fisherman.

As saxophonist and leader of the punk-jazz group the Lounge Lizards, Lurie emerged as a cult figure in New York’s downtown arts scene in the 1980s, and the deal was cemented with his surly, straight-faced performances in Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law. As writer Tad Friend put it in a 2010 New Yorker article, “Between Fourteenth Street and Canal–the known universe, basically–he was the man.”

In 1991 Lurie ventured outside that universe, into the middle-American realm of the TV fishing show. With backing from Japanese investors, he assembled a film crew and invited some famous friends–Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe, Dennis Hopper and Matt Dillon–on a series of improbable fishing trips. Fishing with John, as the series is called, builds on the deadpan, journey-to-nowhere sensibility of Stranger than Paradise: nothing much happens.

But that’s the point. As a reviewer for the Los Angeles Times said, Fishing with John is “like Waiting for Godot on water.” The pleasure is in observing people so utterly out of their element. It’s like watching Marlin Perkins or Curt Gowdy wander into a SoHo performance art happening.

In the episode above, Tom Waits doesn’t believe his ears when a Jamaican fishing guide tells him what time to get up in the morning: “Five o’clock?” Waits reportedly didn’t speak to Lurie for two years afterward. “I dunno why I ever let you talk me into this,” he grumbles. “It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

In addition to the Waits episode, you can watch the Jim Jarmusch segment online or own the entire series (six episodes, 147 minutes) on the Criterion Collection DVD, which includes commentary by Lurie. And to learn about what Lurie has been up to since the series was made–his struggle with the neurological effects of Lyme disease, his hiding out from an alleged stalker, his new focus on painting–be sure to read Larson Sutton’s 2011 interview with Lurie at Jambands.com. H/T Biblioklept

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Tom Waits Fishing with John Lurie: ‘Like Waiting for Godot on Water’ is a post from: Open Culture

The films of David Lynch seem anything but “commercial.” Disturbing, incomprehensible, they shine a flashlight into the darkest regions of the subconscious mind. When you walk out of a theater after watching a David Lynch film you feel like you just woke up from a vivid and unsettling dream.

But Lynch has been leading a double life. While making uncompromisingly artistic works for the movie theaters, he has been directing commercials for television and other media on the side. Why does he do it? “Well,” Lynch told Chris Rodley in Lynch on Lynch, “they’re little bitty films, and I always learn something by doing them.”

Lynch began receiving offers to make commercials after the critical success of Blue Velvet in 1986. His first project was a series of four 30-second spots for Calvin Klein’s Obsession fragrance in 1988, each with a passage written by a famous novelist. The ad above quotes Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. You can also watch commercials featuring F.Scott Fitzgerald and D.H. Lawrence, but the fourth one, featuring Gustave Flaubert, is currently unavailable.

Lynch has completed many advertising assignments over the years, always managing to retain something of his unique vision in the process. We’ve selected some of the most strikingly “Lynchian” of the commercials. Scroll down and enjoy.

When Lynch was asked a few years ago how he felt about product placement in movies, his videotaped answer went viral on YouTube: “Bullshit. That’s how I feel. Total fucking bullshit.” So it’s strange to think that Lynch once agreed to place the entire fictional world of one of his most famous creations, Twin Peaks, at the service of a Japanese coffee company. But that’s what he did in 1991, for Georgia Coffee. In Lynch on Lynch, the filmmaker was asked whether he was concerned about what the commercials might do to the Twin Peaks image. “Yes,” he replied. “I’m really against it in principle, but they were so much fun to do, and they were only running in Japan and so it just felt OK.”

The four commercials, each only 30 seconds long, follow FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle McLachlan) as he solves the mystery of a missing Japanese woman in the town of Twin Peaks, all the while managing to enjoy plenty of “damn fine” Georgia Coffee. Alas, the Japanese commercials were not as successful as the American TV series. “We were supposed to do a second year, and do four more 30-second spots,” Lynch said, “but they didn’t want to do them.”

You can watch the first episode, “Lost,” above, and follow the rest of the story through these links: Episode Two: “Cherry Pie,” Episode Three: “The Mystery of ‘G’” and Episode Four: “The Rescue.”

In 1991 Lynch made one of the creepiest public service messages ever (above) concerning New York City’s rat problem. The cinematography is by Lynch’s longtime collaborator Frederick Elmes.

“Who is Gio” (above) was shot for Georgio Armani in Los Angeles in early 1992, right when several Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King–a verdict that sparked mayhem in the streets. “We were shooting the big scene with the musicians and the club the night the riots broke out in LA,” Lynch told Chris Rodley. “Inside the club we were all races and religions, getting along so fantastically, and outside the club the world was coming apart.”

Of all his early advertising clients, Lynch said, Armani gave him the most freedom. The two-and-a-half-minute version above is an extension of the originally broadcast 60-second commercial.

One of the most bizarre of Lynch’s commercials is his 1998 contribution (above) to the “Parisienne People” campaign. The Swiss cigarette maker Parisienne invited famous directors to make short commercials for screening in movie theaters across Switzerland. To see how others handled the same assignment, follow these links: Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, Jean-Luc Godard (with wife Anne-Marie Miéville), Giuseppe Tornatore, and Ethan and Joel Coen.

Lynch’s surreal 2000 commercial for Sony Playstation (above), called “The Third Place,” is wide open for interpretation. Writer Greg Olson takes a heroic stab at it in his book, David Lynch: Beautiful Dark:

For sixty seconds we proceed through a labyrinth of Lynchian themes and motifs visualized in black and white, thus signifying the bifurcation of the world into two polarities. A man in a black suit and a white shirt encounters eerie passageways, sudden flames, barren trees, factory smoke, a woman who won’t speak her secrets, a wounded figure wrapped in bandages. The man meets his own double, and a man with a duck’s head. A sourceless voice asks, “Where are we?” The dualistic duck-man, who synthesizes animal instinct and human learning, knows: “Welcome to the third place.”

Yes. The duck-man knows.

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David Lynch’s Surreal Commercials is a post from: Open Culture

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when New York and much of the world were still in a state of shock, a group of top-flight actors, directors and other creative workers donated their time and talents for a special project to lure tourists back to the Big Apple. The “New York Miracle” ads were unveiled only two months after the tragedy, and featured stars like Robert DeNiro, Woody Allen, Ben Stiller and Billy Crystal. The commercials were as much a boost to the city’s morale as they were an invitation to tourists. At the end of each segment, Mayor Rudy Giuliani intones: “The New York Miracle. Be a part of it.”

The video above offers a look back at all nine ads. They appear in the following order:

1. “Deli,” starring Ben Stiller and Kevin Bacon.
2. “Turkey,” starring Robert DeNiro and Billy Crystal; directed by Barry Levinson.
3. “Theatre,” starring Barbara Walters; directed by Bryan Buckley.
4. “Skating,” starring Woody Allen; directed by Joe Pytka.
5. “Yankee Stadium,” starring Henry Kissinger; directed by Joe Pytka.
6. “Philharmonic,” starring Yogi Berra; directed by Joe Pytka.
7. “New York Giants Kicker,” starring Vanessa Williams.
8. “Marathon,” starring Al Roker.
9. “Santa,” starring Christopher Walken.

via @webacion

Robert DeNiro, Woody Allen and Others in the Post 9/11 “New York Miracle” TV Commercials is a post from: Open Culture

Last month we brought you some little-known soap commercials by Ingmar Bergman. Today we present a series of lyrical television advertisements made by the great Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini during the final decade of his life.

In 1984, when he was 64 years old, Fellini agreed to make a miniature film featuring Campari, the famous Italian apéritif. The result, Oh, che bel paesaggio! (“Oh, what a beautiful landscape!”), shown above, features a man and a woman seated across from one another on a long-distance train. The man (played by Victor Poletti) smiles, but the woman (Silvia Dionisio) averts her eyes, staring sullenly out the window and picking up a remote control to switch the scenery. She grows increasingly exasperated as a sequence of desert and medieval landscapes pass by. Still smiling, the man takes the remote control, clicks it, and the beautiful Campo di Miracoli (“Field of Miracles”) of Pisa appears in the window, embellished by a towering bottle of Campari.

“In just one minute,” writes Tullio Kezich in Federico Fellini: His Life and Work, “Fellini gives us a chapter of the story of the battle between men and women, and makes reference to the neurosis of TV, insinuates that we’re disparaging the miraculous gifts of nature and history, and offers the hope that there might be a screen that will bring the joy back. The little tale is as quick as a train and has a remarkably light touch.”

Also in 1984, Fellini made a commercial titled Alta Societa (“High Society”) for Barilla rigatoni pasta (above). As with the Campari commercial, Fellini wrote the script himself and collaborated with cinematographer Ennio Guarnieri and musical director Nicola Piovani. The couple in the restaurant were played by Greta Vaian and Maurizio Mauri. The Barilla spot is perhaps the least inspired of Fellini’s commercials. Better things were yet to come.

In 1991 Fellini made a series of three commercials for the Bank of Rome called Che Brutte Notti or “The Bad Nights.” “These commercials, aired the following year,” writes Peter Bondanella in The Films of Federico Fellini, “are particularly interesting, since they find their inspiration in various dreams Fellini had sketched out in his dream notebooks during his career.”

In the episode above, titled “The Picnic Lunch Dream,” the classic damsel-in-distress scenario is turned upside down when a man (played by Paolo Villaggio) finds himself trapped on the railroad tracks with a train bearing down on him while the beautiful woman he was dining with (Anna Falchi) climbs out of reach and taunts him. But it’s all a dream, which the man tells to his psychoanalyst (Fernando Rey). The analyst interprets the dream and assures the man that his nights will be restful if he puts his money in the Banco di Roma.

The other commercials, which are currently not available online, are called “The Tunnel Dream” and “The Dream of the Lion in the Cellar.” (You can watch Roberto Di Vito’s short, untranslated film of Fellini and his crew working on the project here.)

The bank commercials were the last films Fellini ever made. He died a year after they aired, at age 73. In Kezich’s view, the deeply personal and imaginative ads amount to Fellini’s last testament, a brief but wondrous return to form. “In Federico’s life,” he writes, “these three commercial spots are a kind of Indian summer, the golden autumn of a patriarch of cinema who, for a moment, holds again the reins of creation.”

Fellini’s Fantastic TV Commercials is a post from: Open Culture

Earlier this week, we brought you Audrey Hepburn’s Screen Test for Roman Holiday (1953). Next up, we have Katharine Hepburn appearing on the very 70s set of The Dick Cavett Show. In case you’re wondering, the two Hepburns were only distantly related. According to Salon, they shared one common ancestor, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, the third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Anyway, here’s the backstory on the Cavett interview that aired on September 14, 1973:

Hepburn rarely granted interviews, and when she did, she wanted them under her terms. When she agreed to appear on the Dick Cavett Show they went in the studio a day early so she could get the feel of things. They ended up doing the interview right then and there, without an audience.

Watch a clip of the actual interview here.

In the past, we have featured Cavett’s interviews with Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, and George Harrison. And don’t forget this feud between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. Through Amazon, you can also purchase highlights of conversations with Marlon Brando, Fred Astaire, Robert Mitchum, Orson Welles, Groucho Marx, Kirk Douglas, Bette Davis, and others. h/t Peter Kaufman

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and now Google Plus and share intelligent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Katharine Hepburn Rearranges the Furniture on The Dick Cavett Show is a post from: Open Culture

Last week we gave you John Cage performing his avant-garde composition Water Walk on the CBS game show “I’ve Got a Secret” in 1960. Now, this week, we’re following up with a nice complement — Frank Zappa bringing his own brand of offbeat music to the American airwaves in 1963. Only 22 years old and not yet famous, Zappa appeared on The Steve Allen Show and made music with some drumsticks, a bass bow, and two garden-variety bicycles — and nothing more.

The video above gives you mostly the prelude to the actual music. Then, in the first video below, Zappa gives a demo of the instruments. Next comes the Concerto for Two Bicycles, which features the show’s house orchestra joining the cacophonous fun. The clips run a good 15 minutes.

A Young Frank Zappa Plays the Bicycle on The Steve Allen Show (1963) is a post from: Open Culture

In 1952, John Cage composed his most controversial piece, 4′33,″ a four-and-a-half minute reflection on the sound of silence. Now fast forward eight years. It’s February, 1960, and we find the composer teaching his famous Experimental Composition courses at The New School in NYC, and paying a visit to the CBS game show “I’ve Got a Secret.” The TV show offered Cage something of a teachable moment, a chance to introduce the broader public to his brand of avant-garde music. Cage’s piece is called Water Walk (1959), and it’s all performed with unconventional instruments, save a grand piano. A water pitcher, iron pipe, goose call, bathtub, rubber duckie, and five unplugged radios — they all make the music. And the audience doesn’t quite know how to react, except with nervous laughter. It wasn’t particularly courteous. But, as one scholar has noted, it’s equally remarkable that prime time TV gave ten minutes of uninterrupted airtime to avant-garde music. You take the good with the bad.

via Biblioklept/WFMU

John Cage Performs Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960) is a post from: Open Culture

Let’s do the time warp today and revisit the Not-S0-Golden Age of American Television. The year was 1978. Star Wars fever still gripped America, and the Variety Show TV format wouldn’t say die. So, producing The Star Wars Holiday Special was a no-brainer. The two-hour show takes you inside the domestic world of Chewbacca and his family – his father Itchy, his wife Malla, and his son Lumpy — and features guest appearances by Jefferson Starship, Harvey Korman and Bea Arthur, plus a little stock footage of Alec Guinness. As for the production quality and special effects? They’re all textbook kitsch.

You’ve heard enough to know that this wasn’t the finest hour for the Star Wars franchise. One critic called it the ”the worst two hours of television ever.” And, when he’s willing to acknowledge the existence of the TV special, George Lucas readily admits that turning Star Wars into a variety show “wasn’t the smartest thing to do.” But because the show only aired once in its entirety, the holiday special has gained something of a cult status and circulates “underground” on the web. Vanity Fair has more on this misadventure in television programming here. H/T goes to Dangerous Minds.

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The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978): It’s Oh So Kitsch is a post from: Open Culture

Countdown is a British TV game show revolving around words and numbers. In the numbers round, contestants select six of twenty-four shuffled tiles with numbers on them. Next, a computer generates a random three-digit target number and the contestants have thirty seconds to get as close to that number as possible by combining the six numbers through addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. This memorable episode of Countdown aired in March 1997 and starred James Martin and his rather unusual way of arriving at the target number of 952.

One YouTube user suggested a different way: 6 x 75 = 450; 450 ÷ 50 = 9; 100 + 3 = 103; 9 x 103 = 927; 927 + 25 = 952

I found yet another way: 100 + 3 = 103; 103 x 6 = 618; 618 x 75 = 46,350; 46,350 ÷ 50 = 927; 927 + 25 = 952

What about you? Any more suggestions?

By profession, Matthias Rascher teaches English and History at a High School in northern Bavaria, Germany. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twitter.

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Incredible Mental Math Gymnastics on “Countdown” is a post from: Open Culture

Spike Jonze has made a name for himself as a wildly inventive director of music videos and feature films, like Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. He has also created some of the most distinctive television commercials of the past decade. Today we bring you a few of his greatest hits.

In late 2002 Jonze created a stir with his IKEA commercial, “Lamp” (above). The 60-second spot went on to win the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Boards magazine listed “Lamp” as one of the top 10 commercials of the decade, writing:

Spike Jonze’s incredibly human directing touch created a believable tenderness between a woman and her new Ikea lighting, eliciting pure empathy for a lonely, discarded object, left to suffer curbside in the rain, and then shattered it all with one brilliant stroke of casting that abruptly and brusquely brought us all back to reality.

Jonze’s startling Gap commercial, “Dust,” (above) became a YouTube sensation immediately following its release in 2005, but the company pulled the 90-second ad after testing it in only a few cities. Perhaps the spectacle of a corporate brand exuberantly doing violence to its image was a bit too much for the boys in the boardroom. The decision to shelve the ad made the company look even less hip than before. As Seth Stevenson wrote in Slate, “I just can’t understand spending all that money on a big-name director, and a big-budget shoot, and then frittering the results away on such a limited purpose. Did Gap not see the possibilities? Were they too scared to go for broke?”

Another ground-breaking Jonze commercial from 2005, “Hello Tomorrow,” (above) was made to introduce a self-adjusting, “intelligent” sneaker from Adidas. The spot uses special effects to create the impression of a lucid dream. The music was created by Jonze’s brother, Sam “Squeak E. Clean” Spiegel (Jonze’s birth name is Adam Spiegel) and sung by his girlfriend at the time, Karen O of the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The ad received many awards, including two Gold Lions at Cannes. The sneaker was dropped by Adidas in 2006, but the commercial lives on.

Spike Jonze’s Imaginative TV Ads is a post from: Open Culture