The Crazy Never Die: Hunter S. Thompson in Rare 1988 Documentary (NSFW)

What should we make of Hunter S. Thomp­son today? Only a hard­ened con­trar­i­an could down­play his impor­tance as a chron­i­cler of the col­lapse of six­ties-style utopi­anism in Amer­i­ca. Few read­ers could for­get — or refrain from com­mit­ting to mem­o­ry — the famous pas­sage of Thomp­son’s jour­nal­is­tic and psy­che­del­ic nov­el Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) that looks back on the ruins of hip­piedom from with­in the hang­over of the ear­ly sev­en­ties. With unmatched clar­i­ty, he traces how “the ener­gy of a whole gen­er­a­tion comes to a head in a long fine flash,” the “sense of inevitable vic­to­ry over the forces of Old and Evil,” the feel­ing of “rid­ing the crest of a high and beau­ti­ful wave,” and how, “less than five years lat­er, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave final­ly broke and rolled back.”

In the sev­en­ties, Thomp­son count­ed among his friends San Fran­cis­co pornog­ra­phers the Mitchell broth­ers, best known for pro­duc­ing Behind the Green Door, which hit the zeit­geist the year after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In 1988, the Mitchell broth­ers grabbed their cam­eras and fol­lowed Thomp­son around on a lec­ture tour, to places like the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas and Port­land, Ore­gon’s First Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church, col­lect­ing mate­r­i­al for what would become the half-hour doc­u­men­tary The Crazy Nev­er Die. It fol­lows from the title that, since the news of Thomp­son’s hav­ing removed him­self from this mor­tal coil broke sev­en years ago last week, he either did not die, or was not crazy. Though the lat­ter pos­si­bil­i­ty seems more plau­si­ble on its face, those famil­iar with the trap­pings of Thomp­son’s pub­lic per­sona — the “for­ti­fied com­pound,” the rounds unloaded into the type­writer, the pea­cocks — may find the for­mer eas­i­er to swal­low. Just look at the footage cut between the lec­ture seg­ments: Thomp­son spray­ing a makeshift aerosol flamethrow­er, Thomp­son light­ing a can­non, Thomp­son vicious­ly attack­ing the cam­era with a Mex­i­can restau­rant-nap­kin — all rigid­ly in line with his man-out-of-con­trol image.

Wit­ness to the end of the Age of Aquar­ius, drug-fueled bon viveur, sociopo­lit­i­cal crit­ic, flail­ing mani­ac: Thomp­son con­tained mul­ti­tudes. His Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail ’72 remains one of the most inci­sive texts I’ve read on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty — more so than any­thing polit­i­cal sci­ence class­es assigned me — but over the fol­low­ing decades his polit­i­cal posi­tions cur­dled into a sad sort of para­noia. The Crazy Nev­er Die cap­tures Thomp­son in full gad­fly mode, pack­ing hous­es and eas­i­ly enter­tain­ing them, whether on time or (more com­mon­ly) not. But the con­tent of these talks, assum­ing you can fol­low it, seems alto­geth­er less rel­e­vant to the man’s endur­ing appeal than the life and sen­si­bil­i­ty that pro­duced it. He takes the usu­al crowd-pleas­ing swipes at Nixon and Rea­gan, but then delves hap­haz­ard­ly into elab­o­rate the­ses involv­ing Oliv­er North, George H.W. Bush, and Iran. (1988, recall.) He takes par­tic­u­lar excep­tion to Ed Meese, a name I imag­ine very few of Thomp­son’s younger fans rec­og­nize. But when the name of Meese and what­ev­er crimes may or may not be pinned upon it has long fad­ed from liv­ing mem­o­ry — and sure­ly that time is upon us — the name of Thomp­son will keep on res­onat­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing.

(NSFW warn­ing: Stay­ing true to form, the Mitchell broth­ers saw fit to include a few flash­es of nudi­ty through­out this doc­u­men­tary.)

The Crazy Nev­er Die has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our meta list 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by the Hel­l’s Angels

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Wes Anderson from Above. Quentin Tarantino From Below.

When you watch a direc­tor’s work long enough, you pick up on his/her sig­na­ture tricks — the themes and cam­era work that appear again and again. Last month, a YouTu­ber who goes by the name “Kog­o­na­da” cre­at­ed Wes Ander­son // FROM ABOVE, a mon­tage cap­tur­ing Ander­son­’s pen­chant for the aer­i­al shot, a move that con­tributes to the light­ness, play­ful­ness and quirk­i­ness of his films.

Now “Kog­o­na­da” returns and looks at Quentin Taran­ti­no’s work from a new angle — from below. The view from below has two advan­tages. It puts the actor in a posi­tion of clear dom­i­nance, and it lets the view­er know that vio­lence has tak­en place, with­out actu­al­ly hav­ing to show the dam­age done. For some­one like Taran­ti­no, it’s a handy way to go… H/T @weba­cion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

Tarantino’s Favorite Films Since 1992

Crack­ing Taran­ti­no (Award-win­ning Film From Brazil)

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

When The Artist won the top Oscar on Sun­day night, crit­ic Roger Ebert com­pared it to an episode of The Twi­light Zone. “The Acad­e­my Award for best pic­ture went to a silent film in black and white,” he wrote. “Its vic­to­ry will send Hol­ly­wood back to its think tanks.”

In this short film by Joe LaMat­ti­na of Last Call With Car­son Daly, the writer and direc­tor of The Artist, Michel Haz­anavi­cius, talks about the chal­lenge of hold­ing an audi­ence’s atten­tion with­out dia­logue, and the mag­ic that hap­pens when it’s done right. “There’s a very inter­est­ing process with silent movies,” Haz­anavi­cius says. “The black and white and the lack of sound cre­ates a mys­tery.”

The Artist has taught audi­ences in the 21st cen­tu­ry that silent films can be a delight. If you would like to explore some of the great films from the gold­en age of silent cin­e­ma, vis­it our col­lec­tion of 100 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics, which includes works by Char­lie Chap­lin, Buster Keaton, Fritz Lang, F.W. Mur­nau, G.W. Pab­st and many more. They’re all part of our big­ger meta col­lec­tion of Free Movies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Gen­er­al, “Per­haps the Great­est Film Ever Made,” and 20 Oth­er Buster Keaton Clas­sics Free Online

65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

Watch 10 of the Great­est Silent Films of All Time, All Free Online

 

Neil Young Busking in Glasgow, 1976: The Story Behind the Footage

The day was April 2, 1976. Neil Young was fly­ing into Glas­gow, and a local cam­era crew was wait­ing at the air­port to meet him. Direc­tor Mur­ray Grig­or and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er David Peat had been hired by Young through his record com­pa­ny. As they wait­ed there, at the air­port, they had no idea what to expect.

“The irony,” Peat told Open Cul­ture, “is that nei­ther Mur­ray or myself were par­tic­u­lar­ly knowl­edge­able about the rock world, and we knew lit­tle of this guy Neil Young. So we turned up at the air­port in sports jack­ets and ties to meet him!”

Young’s sched­uled flight from Lon­don arrived, but he was­n’t on it. When a sec­ond flight came in, Peat and Grig­or watched anx­ious­ly as all the pas­sen­gers cleared the ter­mi­nal. Still no Young. Final­ly, said Peat, “this tall bloke in a long coat came ambling down the cor­ri­dor.” The film­mak­ers intro­duced them­selves to Young and asked what he want­ed.

“Just give me some funky shit footage,” said Young.

Nae both­er, as we say in Scot­land,” Peat said. So the film­mak­ers tagged along as the musi­cian and his band, Crazy Horse, head­ed into the city. At this point Mur­ray Grig­or picks up the sto­ry: “Our film­ing got off to a tricky start. When Neil and the band final­ly made it to their lunch in the Albany Hotel’s pent­house, one of them set fire to the paper table dec­o­ra­tions, which we filmed. ‘Just like Nam,’ anoth­er one said as he warmed his hands over the small infer­no lap­ping up towards the inflam­ma­ble ceil­ing.”

At that moment, Peat added, “this very Scot­tish floor man­ag­er leapt in and com­plete­ly cowed them with her rage.” The woman turned to the near­est per­son and demand­ed to know what was going on. “That hap­pened to be our sound recordist, Louis Kramer,” said Grig­or. “She then shout­ed at them to get every­thing burn­ing into the bathroom–and gen­er­al­ly gave them all a dress­ing down.”

As Grig­or explained, “Neil and the band were all stoned out of their skulls.”

When the smoke had cleared at the Albany Hotel, the crew fol­lowed Young out onto the streets, where he began accost­ing passers­by. “Excuse me,” he said. “Could you tell me where the Bank of Scot­land is?” He soon set­tled on a dif­fer­ent des­ti­na­tion. “It was entire­ly Neil’s idea,” Grig­or told us, “to flop down at the entrance to Glas­gow’s Cen­tral Sta­tion and then wait and see who would rec­og­nize him.”

With a scarf wrapped around his neck and a deer­stalk­er hat pulled down over his face, Young took out his ban­jo and har­mon­i­ca and sat on the pave­ment. Peat, whose forté is obser­va­tion­al film­mak­ing, panned his cam­era back and forth between the famous street musi­cian and the peo­ple pass­ing by. Kramer’s sound record­ing pro­vid­ed the con­ti­nu­ity that made it pos­si­ble for Peat to move around and cov­er the scene from dif­fer­ent angles. He noticed that Young was singing about an “Old Laugh­ing Lady,” so when he saw one, he filmed her. The whole thing last­ed only a few min­utes.

Lat­er that evening, Young and Crazy Horse opened their show at the Glas­gow Apol­lo with “The Old Laugh­ing Lady.” It was the last con­cert of their Euro­pean tour. The film crew doc­u­ment­ed the crowd going into the Apol­lo and the show itself. When it was over, Young asked Grig­or to syn­chro­nize the sound and film for lat­er edit­ing. Local edi­tor Bert Eeles did the synch work, Grig­or sent in the film, and that was about the last they ever heard of it. “I always under­stood Neil com­mis­sioned it for his own use as a kind of ‘home movie,’ ” said Peat.

The fire scene from the Albany Hotel resur­faced in Jim Jar­musch’s 1997 film, Year of the Horse: Neil Young and Crazy Horse Live. When the busk­ing scene at Cen­tral Sta­tion recent­ly appeared on the Inter­net, Peat was hap­py to see it, but dis­ap­point­ed with the state it was in (see above). “The qual­i­ty is poor and the sound appears to be slight­ly out of sync,” he said. “It looks as though the mate­r­i­al is in black and white, but I’m sure I shot it in col­or.”

Peat and Grig­or col­lab­o­rat­ed on a num­ber of oth­er projects, includ­ing the 1976 Bil­ly Con­nol­ly doc­u­men­tary Big Banana Feet, which was screened at the Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val last Sun­day for the first time in decades, and the 1983 film, The Archi­tec­ture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Archi­tec­ture has been a major focus of Grig­or’s work. Last month he received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his ser­vices to archi­tec­ture and film. Peat is the sub­ject of an upcom­ing spe­cial on BBC Two, A Life in Film: David Peat.

The strange assign­ment to shoot “funky shit footage” for a strung-out rock star was a minor foot­note in Peat’s long career, but he looks back on it with fond­ness. “The footage of Neil has achieved a sort of icon­ic sta­tus in Glas­gow,” he said. “I was in a music/video store recent­ly try­ing to find out if it exist­ed on any pub­lished DVD, and the guy behind the counter near­ly fell over when I revealed I had shot it. He prob­a­bly just saw an old bloke with a beard instead of the lithe young man who used to dance around with a cam­era!” H/T Dan­ger­ous Minds

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil, 17 Years Old, Appears on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1965)

Ray Kurzweil — he’s the futur­ist of our time, a prophet of tech­nol­o­gy who fore­sees a day when we will achieve Sin­gu­lar­i­ty, a moment when humans will enjoy super­in­tel­li­gence and longer life expectan­cies (per­haps even immor­tal­i­ty) thanks to rapid tech­no­log­i­cal advances. It’s heady stuff, and you can learn more about it by watch­ing his open­ing speech at the first Exec­u­tive Pro­gram at Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty.

Now we take you back to 1965, when Kurzweil was­n’t yet a futur­ist. Only 17 years old, he was a wun­derkind, a high school stu­dent immersed in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence who tin­kered away, and even­tu­al­ly fig­ured out how to pro­gram a com­put­er to pro­duce orig­i­nal musi­cal com­po­si­tions. When the pro­duc­ers of I’ve Got a Secret dis­cov­ered his tal­ents, they brought the young Kurzweil on the show. And the rest you can watch on the video­tape above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Jim­my Page, 13, Plays Gui­tar on BBC Tal­ent Show (1957)

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

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Errol Morris Captures Competitive Eating Champion “El Wingador”

You might know Errol Mor­ris from his doc­u­men­taries like Fast, Cheap, and Out of Con­trol, on emer­gent sys­tems in top­i­ary gar­dens and naked mole-rat colonies; The Fog of War, on the shad­owy career of Robert McNa­ma­ra; and Gates of Heav­en, on com­pet­ing pet ceme­ter­ies (which no less a crit­i­cal author­i­ty than Roger Ebert has called one of the great­est films of all time). You might remem­ber Mor­ris’ inter­view-dri­ven tele­vi­sion series First Per­son with fond­ness — and, giv­en its episodes on ser­i­al-killer groupies, cry­on­ic head-freez­ers, and pro­fes­sion­al high-school stu­dents, per­haps a dash of dis­be­lief. If noth­ing else, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly seen Mor­ris’ com­mer­cials for the likes of PBS, Volk­swa­gen, and Miller High Life. In the last few years, he’s put out a new film, Tabloid, a book on the rela­tion­ship of pho­tog­ra­phy to real­i­ty, Believ­ing is See­ing, and many a post on his New York Times blog. For Errol Mor­ris fans, these are hearty times indeed.

As the newest addi­tion to this Moriss­ian abun­dance, the ten-minute doc­u­men­tary El Wingador pro­files five-time Philadel­phia Wing Bowl cham­pi­on eater Bill “El Wingador” Sim­mons. To win the Wing Bowl, you must sim­ply eat as many chick­en wings as pos­si­ble in the short­est amount of time. Such a man­date stretch­es the def­i­n­i­tion of “eat” to its break­ing point; the trick, as Sim­mons tells Mor­ris, is to train your jaw and esoph­a­gus not to chew, per se, but to bite and swal­low, bite and swal­low, bite and swal­low — “don’t wor­ry about chok­ing.” For a man like El Wingador, eat­ing, like any every­day activ­i­ty tak­en to the lev­el of elite com­pe­ti­tion, makes demands that would strike out­siders as grotesque: con­sum­ing eleven pounds of food per day, putting in hours-long ses­sions with base­ball-sized wads of Toot­sie Rolls, shov­el­ing down hand­fuls of sear­ing-hot piz­za cheese, gnaw­ing on rawhide bones meant for Ger­man Shep­herds. And some­times even insid­ers seem flum­moxed by it all: asked if he would real­ly con­sid­er his reg­i­men an eat­ing dis­or­der, Sim­mons replies, “It’s got­ta be a dis­or­der, ‘cause it’s crazy, man.”

As a seem­ing­ly mar­gin­al sub­cul­ture with its own rules, cus­toms, hier­ar­chies, and per­son­al­i­ties, com­pet­i­tive eat­ing would seem to com­fort­ably inhab­it Mor­ris’ wheel­house; it wouldn’t have sur­prised me if he’d opt­ed to make a fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary about it. But even in the brief min­utes with Sim­mons El Wingador offers us, we glimpse enough of this world and its lead­ing lights — the young hot­shot Joey Chest­nut, the eeri­ly skin­ny Sonya Thomas and Takeru Kobayashi — to sus­pect that the sub­stan­tive dif­fer­ences between com­pet­i­tive eat­ing and “real” ath­let­ics may amount to less than we’d assumed. One might make a solemn point here about star­va­tion in the devel­op­ing world even as the Philadel­phia Wing Bowl puts deca­dent ancient Rome to shame. But it gives me just as much pause to pon­der the unset­tling lack of dif­fer­ences between cram­ming chick­en wings down your throat in the cen­ter of a roar­ing sta­di­um and most oth­er forms of human endeav­or.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Errol Mor­ris’ Trib­ute to Stephen Hawk­ing, A Brief His­to­ry of Time

Errol Mor­ris: Two Essen­tial Truths About Pho­tog­ra­phy

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

John Steinbeck’s Six Tips for the Aspiring Writer and His Nobel Prize Speech

Today is the 110th birth­day of writer John Stein­beck, whose great nov­el of the 1930s, The Grapes of Wrath, gives an elo­quent and sym­pa­thet­ic voice to the dis­pos­sessed. In 1962, Stein­beck was award­ed the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture “for his real­is­tic and imag­i­na­tive writ­ings, com­bin­ing as they do sym­pa­thet­ic humour and keen social per­cep­tion.” You can watch him deliv­er his Nobel speech above.

And for insights into how Stein­beck reached that pin­na­cle, you can read a col­lec­tion of his obser­va­tions on the art of fic­tion from the Fall, 1975 edi­tion of The Paris Review, includ­ing six writ­ing tips jot­ted down in a let­ter to a friend the same year he won the Nobel Prize. “The fol­low­ing,” Stein­beck writes, “are some of the things I have had to do to keep from going nuts.”

1. Aban­don the idea that you are ever going to fin­ish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets fin­ished, you are always sur­prised.

2. Write freely and as rapid­ly as pos­si­ble and throw the whole thing on paper. Nev­er cor­rect or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usu­al­ly found to be an excuse for not going on. It also inter­feres with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of uncon­scious asso­ci­a­tion with the mate­r­i­al.

3. For­get your gen­er­al­ized audi­ence. In the first place, the name­less, face­less audi­ence will scare you to death and in the sec­ond place, unlike the the­ater, it does­n’t exist. In writ­ing, your audi­ence is one sin­gle read­er. I have found that some­times it helps to pick out one person–a real per­son you know, or an imag­ined per­son and write to that one.

4. If a scene or a sec­tion gets the bet­ter of you and you still think you want it–bypass it and go on. When you have fin­ished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the rea­son it gave trou­ble is because it did­n’t belong there.

5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dear­er than the rest. It will usu­al­ly be found that it is out of draw­ing.

6. If you are using dialogue–say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

“As you write,” Stein­beck says, “trust the dis­con­nec­tions and the gaps. If you have writ­ten what your eye first saw and you are stopped, see again. See some­thing else. Take a leap to anoth­er image. Don’t require of your­self that you under­stand the con­nec­tion. Some of the most bril­liant things that hap­pen in fic­tion occur when the writer allows what seems to be a dis­con­nect­ed image to lead him or her away from the line that was being tak­en.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Remem­ber­ing Ernest Hem­ing­way, Fifty Years After His Death

Earth-Size Tornadoes On The Sun

What a sight to behold. Ear­li­er this month, NASA’s Solar Dynam­ics Obser­va­to­ry (SDO) beamed back stun­ning images of the sun’s plas­ma mov­ing vio­lent­ly around the star’s mag­net­ic field for 30 some hours, cre­at­ing a tor­na­do as large as the Earth itself, with gusts reach­ing up to 300,000 miles per hour. That’s accord­ing to Ter­ry Kucera, a solar physi­cist with NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter. NPR has more on the mak­ings of solar storms. Find more awe-inspir­ing footage in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos.

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