William S. Burroughs Reads His Sarcastic “Thanksgiving Prayer” in a 1988 Film By Gus Van Sant

in Film, Poetry | November 25th, 2015

Hav­ing moved to Korea a cou­ple weeks ago, I won’t have the chance to par­take this year in the beloved insti­tu­tion of Amer­i­can cul­ture known as Thanks­giv­ing. (Korea has its own Thanks­giv­ing, but it hap­pened two months ago.) Maybe you live in the Unit­ed States and thus almost cer­tain­ly have a Thanks­giv­ing din­ner of some kind, big or small, com­ing soon. Or maybe you, like me, live else­where in the world, and thus in a place with­out the same tra­di­tion. Either way, you can sure­ly par­take this Thanks­giv­ing in the beloved insti­tu­tion of Amer­i­can cul­ture known as the work of William S. Bur­roughs.

Here we have a short film of Bur­roughs, best known as the author of a body of con­tro­ver­sial and exper­i­men­tal lit­er­a­ture, includ­ing books like Junky and Naked Lunch, shot by Gus Van Sant, best known as the direc­tor of films like Good Will Hunt­ing, My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho, and Drug­store Cow­boy, the last of which includes a mem­o­rable appear­ance by Bur­roughs him­self.

It cap­tures Bur­roughs read­ing his poem “Thanks­giv­ing Day, Nov. 28, 1986,” also known as his “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer.” Van Sant shot it two Thanks­giv­ings after that one, in 1988, the year before Drug­store Cow­boy (and six years after adapt­ing Bur­rough’s sto­ry “The Dis­ci­pline of D.E.” into an ear­ly short film).

Bur­roughs, a life­long crit­ic of Amer­i­ca, fills his prayer with bit­ter­ly sar­cas­tic “thanks” for things like “a con­ti­nent to despoil and poi­son,” “Indi­ans to pro­vide a mod­icum of chal­lenge and dan­ger,” “the KKK,” and “Pro­hi­bi­tion and the war against drugs” (about which his char­ac­ter in Drug­store Cow­boy had some par­tic­u­lar­ly choice words). He ends by express­ing iron­ic, Great Gats­by-quot­ing grat­i­tude for “the last and great­est betray­al of the last and great­est of human dreams.”

Like him — like most every­body — I have my own, if less deep-seat­ed, frus­tra­tions with our home­land, and per­haps in leav­ing I sub­con­scious­ly emu­lat­ed his stretch­es of expa­tri­atism in Mex­i­co, Eng­land, France, and Moroc­co. But I sin­cere­ly doubt that I’ve had my last Thanks­giv­ing on U.S. soil; for all its fail­ings, Amer­i­ca remains too inter­est­ing to stay away from entire­ly. After all, what oth­er coun­try could pos­si­bly pro­duce a writer, a per­son­al­i­ty, or a crit­ic like William S. Bur­roughs?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Drug­store Cow­boy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989)

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

The Dis­ci­pline of D.E.: Gus Van Sant Adapts a Sto­ry by William S. Bur­roughs

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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

in Film | November 25th, 2015

Tony Zhou’s video essay series, Every Frame a Paint­ing, returns with “Buster Keaton: The Art of the Gag.” Although his series nev­er dis­ap­points, this par­tic­u­lar install­ment may be one of Tony’s best, tak­ing you inside the comedic gags of Buster Keaton, a found­ing father of visu­al com­e­dy. If you’ve ever found it hard to appre­ci­ate the artistry of film­mak­ers from the silent era, then you will def­i­nite­ly want to give this a watch. And once you’ve tak­en it all in, you’ll like­ly want to spend time with our pre­vi­ous post: The Gen­er­al, “Per­haps the Great­est Film Ever Made,” and 20 Oth­er Buster Keaton Clas­sics Free Online. Also don’t miss this col­lec­tion fea­tur­ing anoth­er found­ing father of visu­al com­e­dy: 65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

The Art of Mak­ing Intel­li­gent Com­e­dy Movies: 8 Take-Aways from the Films of Edgar Wright

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

The Film­mak­ing Craft of David Finch­er Demys­ti­fied in Two Video Essays

The Pow­er of Silent Movies, with The Artist­Di­rec­tor Michel Haz­anavi­cius

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Mark Twain’s Patented Inventions for Bra Straps and Other Everyday Items

in History, Literature | November 24th, 2015

Twain Brastrap

Much has been made of Mark Twain’s finan­cial problems—the impru­dent invest­ments and poor man­age­ment skills that forced him to shut­ter his large Hart­ford estate and move his fam­i­ly to Europe in 1891. An ear­ly adopter of the type­writer and long an enthu­si­ast of new sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, Twain lost the bulk of his for­tune by invest­ing huge sums—roughly eight mil­lion dol­lars total in today’s money—on a type­set­ting machine, buy­ing the rights to the appa­ra­tus out­right in 1889. The ven­ture bank­rupt­ed him. The machine was over­com­pli­cat­ed and fre­quent­ly broke down, and “before it could be made to work con­sis­tent­ly,” writes the Uni­ver­si­ty of Virginia’s Mark Twain library, “the Lino­type machine swept the mar­ket [Twain] had hoped to cor­ner.”

Twain’s seem­ing­ly blind enthu­si­asm for the ill-fat­ed machine makes him seem like a bun­gler in prac­ti­cal mat­ters. But that impres­sion should be tem­pered by the acknowl­edge­ment that Twain was not only an enthu­si­ast of tech­nol­o­gy, but also a can­ny inven­tor who patent­ed a few tech­nolo­gies, one of which is still high­ly in use today and, indeed, shows no signs of going any­where. I refer to the ubiq­ui­tous elas­tic hook clasp at the back of near­ly every bra, an inven­tion Twain patent­ed in 1871 under his giv­en name Samuel L. Clemens. (View the orig­i­nal patent here.) You can see the dia­gram for his inven­tion above. Call­ing it an “Improve­ment in Adjustable and Detach­able Straps for Gar­ments,” Twain made no men­tion of ladies’ under­gar­ments in his patent appli­ca­tion, refer­ring instead to “the vest, pan­taloons, or oth­er gar­ment upon which my strap is to be used.”

Twain Scrapbook

The device, writes the US Patent and Trade­mark Office, “was not only used for shirts, but under­pants and women’s corsets as well. His pur­pose was to do away with sus­penders, which he con­sid­ered uncom­fort­able.” (At the time, belts served a most­ly dec­o­ra­tive func­tion.) Twain’s inven­tions tend­ed to solve prob­lems he encoun­tered in his dai­ly life, and his next patent was for a hob­by­ist set of which he him­self was a mem­ber. After the soon-to-be bra strap, Twain devised a method of improve­ment in scrap­book­ing, an avid pur­suit of his, in 1873.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, scrap­books were assem­bled by hand-glu­ing each item, which Twain seemed to con­sid­er an over­ly labo­ri­ous and messy process. His inven­tion—writes The Atlantic in part of a series they call “Patents of the Rich and Famous”—involved “two pos­si­ble self-adhe­sive sys­tems,” sim­i­lar to self-seal­ing envelopes, in which, as his patent states, “the sur­faces of the leaves where­of are coat­ed with a suit­able adhe­sive sub­stance cov­er­ing the whole or parts of the entire sur­face.” (See the less-than-clear dia­gram for the inven­tion above.) The scrap­book­ing device proved “very pop­u­lar,” writes the US Patent Office, “and sold over 25,000 copies.”

twain-game

Twain obtained his final patent in 1885 for a “Game Appa­ra­tus” that he called the “Mem­o­ry-Builder” (see it above). The object of the game was pri­mar­i­ly edu­ca­tion­al, help­ing, as he wrote, to “fill the children’s heads with dates with­out study.” As we report­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, “Twain worked out a way to play it on a crib­bage board con­vert­ed into a his­tor­i­cal time­line.” Unlike his first two inven­tions, the game met with no com­mer­cial suc­cess. “Twain sent a few pro­to­types to toy stores in 1891,” writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, “but there wasn’t very much inter­est, so the game nev­er went into pro­duc­tion.” Nonethe­less, we still have Twain to thank, or to damn, for the bra strap, an inven­tion of no small impor­tance.

Twain him­self seems to have had some con­tra­dic­to­ry atti­tudes about his role as an inven­tor, and of the sin­gu­lar recog­ni­tion grant­ed to indi­vid­u­als through patent law. Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, the US Patent Office claims that Twain “believed strong­ly in the val­ue of the patent sys­tem” and cites a pas­sage from A Con­necti­cut Yan­kee in King Arthur’s Court in sup­port. But in a let­ter Twain wrote to Helen Keller in 1903, he expressed a very dif­fer­ent view. “It takes a thou­sand men to invent a tele­graph, or a steam engine, or a phono­graph, or a tele­phone or any oth­er impor­tant thing,” Twain wrote, “and the last man gets the cred­it and we for­get the oth­ers. He added his lit­tle mite—that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that nine­ty-nine parts of all things that pro­ceed from the intel­lect are pla­gia­risms, pure and sim­ple.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Play Mark Twain’s “Mem­o­ry-Builder,” His Game for Remem­ber­ing His­tor­i­cal Facts & Dates

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

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

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New Wave Music–DEVO, Talking Heads, Blondie, Elvis Costello–Gets Introduced to America by ABC’s TV Show, 20/20 (1979)

in Music, Television | November 24th, 2015

Giv­en the efforts of peo­ple like Mal­colm McLaren to turn punk rock into a viable com­mer­cial product—or at least a quick cash grab—it’s a lit­tle sur­pris­ing it took as long as it did for “pop punk” to find its prof­itable 90s/oughties teenage niche. Always a catch-all term for an eclec­tic vari­ety of styles, punk instead fur­ther diver­si­fied in the eight­ies into var­i­ous kinds of post-punk, hard­core, and new wave. The lat­ter devel­op­ment, how­ev­er, quick­ly found a com­mer­cial audi­ence, with its suc­cess­ful fusion of 70s pop, reg­gae, and dis­co ele­ments with punk’s wry, arty-out­sider sen­si­bil­i­ty. Artists like Gary Numan, Blondie, DEVO, Talk­ing Heads, and even The Clash emerged from the 70s with high­ly dance­able hits that set the tone for the sound of the next decade.

But first the pub­lic had to learn what new wave was, and many of them did in a sur­pris­ing­ly main­stream way, in the 1979 spe­cial pro­duced by ABC’s 20/20 in two parts here. By com­par­i­son with the num­ber of awk­ward­ly clue­less or bla­tant­ly sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic news reports on emerg­ing youth cul­tures over the decades, the show is “impres­sive­ly astute,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “for a news seg­ment on new music from one of the major TV net­works.” It fea­tures a num­ber of the above-named artists—DEVO, Blondie, Talk­ing Heads—and makes an inter­est­ing attempt to sit­u­ate the music on a con­tin­u­um with Chuck Berry, Bud­dy Hol­ly, and the Rolling Stones.

The seg­ment claims that new wave both sat­i­rized and updat­ed rock and pop—with DEVO’s cov­er of “(I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion” as Exhib­it A. And while new wave would even­tu­al­ly glam it up with the best of the 70s dis­co acts—think Duran Duran or the bub­blegum pop of Flock of Seag­ulls or Kajagoogoo—in its first, post-punk phase, the music stripped things down to 50s sim­plic­i­ty. Elvis Costel­lo gets called in to rep­re­sent the revival­ism inher­ent in the nascent form, herald­ing a “redis­cov­ery of the rock and roll audi­ence.”

There are prob­lems with the his­to­ry: punk gets labeled “an extreme ele­ment of new wave” and “a British phe­nom­e­non,” where it makes more sense to call it a pre­cur­sor with roots in Detroit and New York. It’s a nit­picky point, and one shouldn’t expect too much accu­ra­cy in a top-down net­work news report. The real treat here is the per­for­mance clips and rare inter­views. Even with the poor video qual­i­ty, they’re all well worth watch­ing, espe­cial­ly the extend­ed focus on the Talk­ing Heads in the sec­ond part above. As Dan­ger­ous Minds writes, “it takes an effort of will to remem­ber how weird David Byrne… must have seemed to a main­stream audi­ence in 1979.” Or not. He still comes off as pret­ty odd to me, and the music still fresh and inven­tive.

Note: Elvis Costel­lo has just pub­lished a new auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Unfaith­ful Music & Dis­ap­pear­ing Ink. And he nar­rates the audio­book ver­sion, which you can down­load for free (along with anoth­er audio­book) if you join Audible.com’s 30-day Free Tri­al pro­gram. Get details on the 30-day tri­al here. And get Elvis Costel­lo’s audio­book, by click­ing here and then click­ing the “Try Audi­ble Free” but­ton in the upper right.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of CBGB, the Ear­ly Home of Punk and New Wave

See Very Ear­ly Con­cert Footage of the B‑52s, When New Wave Music Was Actu­al­ly New (1978)

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

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

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Picasso Makes Wonderful Abstract Art

in Art, Film | November 24th, 2015

Pablo Picas­so, as you may know, pro­duced a fair few mem­o­rable works in his long life­time. He also came up with a num­ber of quotable quotes. “Every act of cre­ation is first an act of destruc­tion” has par­tic­u­lar­ly stuck with me, but one does won­der what an artist who thinks this way actu­al­ly does when he cre­ates — or, rather, when he first destroys, then cre­ates. Luck­i­ly for us, we can watch Picas­so in action, in vin­tage footage from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent films–first, at the top of the post, in a clip from 1950’s Vis­ite à Picas­so by Bel­gian artist and film­mak­er Paul Hae­saerts (which you can watch online: part one, part two).

In it, Picas­so paints on glass in front of the cam­era, thus enabling us to see the painter at work from, in some sense, the paint­ing’s per­spec­tive. Just above, you can watch anoth­er, sim­i­lar­ly filmed clip from Vis­ite à Picas­so.

Both of them show how Picas­so could, with­out much in the way of appar­ent advance plan­ning or thought, sim­ply begin cre­at­ing art, lit­er­al­ly at a stroke — on which would fol­low anoth­er stroke, and anoth­er, and anoth­er. “Action is the foun­da­tion­al key to all suc­cess,” he once said, words even more wide­ly applic­a­ble than the obser­va­tion about cre­ation as destruc­tion, and here we can see his actions becom­ing art before our eyes.

It also hap­pens in the clip above, though this time cap­tured from a more stan­dard over-the-shoul­der per­spec­tive. “The pur­pose of art is wash­ing the dust of dai­ly life off our souls,” Picas­so also said, and one sens­es some­thing of that ablu­tion­ary rit­u­al (and not just because of how lit­tle cloth­ing the man has cho­sen to wear) in the footage below, where­in he lays down lines on a can­vas the size of an entire wall. It comes from Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot’s 1956 doc­u­men­tary The Mys­tery of Picas­so, which offers a wealth of close looks at Picas­so’s process.

You can watch the film online here, or see a few Picas­so paint­ings come togeth­er in time-lapse in the trail­er above. “The paint­ings cre­at­ed by Picas­so in this film can­not be seen any­where else,” the crawl at the end of the trail­er informs us. “They were destroyed upon com­ple­tion of the film.” So it seems that at least some acts of cre­ation, for Picas­so him­self, not only began with an act of destruc­tion, but end­ed with one too.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

Guer­ni­ca: Alain Resnais’ Haunt­ing Film on Picasso’s Paint­ing & the Crimes of the Span­ish Civ­il War

The Post­cards That Picas­so Illus­trat­ed and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apol­li­naire & Gertrude Stein

Behold Pablo Picasso’s Illus­tra­tions of Balzac’s Short Sto­ry “The Hid­den Mas­ter­piece” (1931)

Pablo Picasso’s Ten­der Illus­tra­tions For Aristo­phanes’ Lysis­tra­ta (1934)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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One Man-Band Plays Amazing Covers, Note-for-Note, of Yes, CSNY, Zeppelin & More

in Music | November 24th, 2015

I’ve had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet many incred­i­ble musi­cians in per­son, and I’ve always enjoyed watch­ing them do some­thing bet­ter than I ever could, whether it’s wail­ing away on the drums, gui­tar, key­boards, bass… what­ev­er the instru­ment, it’s great fun to see a mas­ter in action. And I’ve met a few mul­ti­tal­ent­ed indi­vid­u­als who could do a lit­tle, or a lot, of every­thing. But I’ve nev­er met any­one as tal­ent­ed as Jim, the musi­cian in these videos, who goes by the name of Fri­day Night Lul­la­by, and who recre­ates near­ly every note and nuance in clas­sic rock songs from Yes, Led Zep­pelin, Jethro Tull, the Who, CSNY, and more.

His one-man-band mot­to is “we are one per­son,” and you can see why. With the ben­e­fit of record­ing tech­nol­o­gy, he can turn him­self into an orches­tra. At the top of the post, see a teas­er video in which Jim gives us snip­pets of the 60 songs he’s remade. And above, see his ver­sion of Yes’s “Round­about.”

Now you can argue that no mat­ter how good he is, he could nev­er repro­duce the musi­cal per­son­al­i­ties of, say, Steve Howe or Jon Ander­son, and that’s fair enough, but beside the point, real­ly. The guy is good beyond belief, and I’m cer­tain­ly in awe watch­ing these videos of him at work in his home stu­dio, play­ing all 43 tracks of “Round­about.” Or, if Yes isn’t your bag, let him wow you below with the vocal har­monies in CSNY’s “Car­ry On.”

Still not impressed? Check his ver­sion of Stair­way to Heav­en here, or alter­na­tive­ly A‑Ha’s “Take On Me,” below. It’s a depar­ture from the clas­sic rock mate­r­i­al he’s clear­ly more com­fort­able with, and he han­dles it with the same deft­ness and skill, includ­ing that mid-song high note, show­ing off some pret­ty keen video edit­ing skills to boot. For even more mind blow­ing cov­ers, check out the Fri­day Night Lul­la­by Youtube chan­nel.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four­teen-Year-Old Girl’s Blis­ter­ing Heavy Met­al Per­for­mance of Vival­di

Dutch­man Mas­ters the Art of Singing Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Back­wards

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

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

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Artist Turns a Crop Field Into a Van Gogh Painting, Seen Only From Airplanes

in Art | November 23rd, 2015

For­mal­ly Trained as an avant-garde, abstract expres­sion­ist painter, Stan Herd went on to become some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent — an earth­works artist who takes fields where crops are grown and turns them into sprawl­ing can­vas­es on which he makes art of his own. It has been said about him: “Herd is an unusu­al artist. His medi­um is the earth itself; his palette con­sists of soil, wheat, sun­flow­ers, and corn; his brush is a trac­tor; and his images can be seen only from an air­plane.”

van gogh painting in a field

Image by The Min­neapo­lis Insti­tute of Art

Many of his ear­ly cre­ations can be revis­it­ed in his 1994 book Crop Art and Oth­er Earth­works. To see his lat­est work, just click play on the video above. Com­mis­sioned by the Min­neapo­lis Insti­tute of Art, this earth­work fea­tures a ren­der­ing of an “Olive Tree” paint­ing that Van Gogh com­plet­ed as part of a larg­er series of Olive Tree paint­ings cre­at­ed while liv­ing in an asy­lum in Saint-Rémy in 1889.

Vincent_van_Gogh_Olive_Trees_lowe

Mr. Herd start­ed work on the project last spring, plant­i­ng dif­fer­ent crops in a field owned by Thom­son Reuters. By fall, pas­sen­gers fly­ing into Min­neapo­lis could catch a view of Herd’s Van Gogh–like the one you see above.

via This is Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Van Gogh’s 1888 Paint­ing, “The Night Cafe,” Ani­mat­ed with Ocu­lus Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Soft­ware

The Unex­pect­ed Math Behind Van Gogh’s “Star­ry Night”

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

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Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Masterpiece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tantalizing Animation

in Animation, Sci Fi | November 23rd, 2015

Last year we fea­tured art­work from the Dune movie that nev­er was, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, the mys­ti­cism-mind­ed Chilean direc­tor of such oft-described-as-mind-blow­ing pic­tures as El Topo and The Holy Moun­tain, and the artist Jean Giraud, bet­ter known as Mœbius, cre­ator of oft-described-as-mind-blow­ing comics as Arzach, Blue­ber­ry, and The Air­tight Garage. If ever a meet­ing of two cre­ative minds made more sense, I haven’t heard about it. Alas, Jodor­owsky and Mœbius’ work did­n’t lead to their own Dune movie, but it did­n’t mark the end of their artis­tic part­ner­ship, as any­one who’s read The Incal knows full well.

Telling a meta­phys­i­cal, satir­i­cal, space-oper­at­ic sto­ry in the form of com­ic books orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished through­out the 1980s (with sequel and pre­quel series to come over the fol­low­ing 25 years), The Incal on the page became the fullest real­iza­tion of Jodor­owsky and Mœbius’ com­bined vision.

Its suc­cess made it a log­i­cal can­di­date for film adap­ta­tion, and so direc­tor Pas­cal Blais brought togeth­er artists from Heavy Met­al mag­a­zine (in which Mœbius first pub­lished some of his best known work) to make it hap­pen. It result­ed in noth­ing more than a trail­er, but what a trail­er; you can watch a recent­ly revamped edi­tion of the one Blais and his col­lab­o­ra­tors put togeth­er in the 1980s at the top of the post.

Any Incal fan who watch­es this spruced-up trail­er will imme­di­ate­ly want noth­ing more in this life than to see a fea­ture-film ver­sion of dis­solute pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor John DiFool, his con­crete seag­ull Deepo, and the tit­u­lar all-pow­er­ful crys­tal that sets the sto­ry in motion. And any­one not yet ini­ti­at­ed into the sci­ence-fic­tion “Jodoverse” for which The Incal forms the basis will want to plunge into the com­ic books at the ear­li­est oppor­tu­ni­ty. Per­haps Blais will one day ful­ly revive the project; until then, we’ll have to con­tent our­selves with Luc Besson’s The Fifth Ele­ment (with its Mœbius-devel­oped pro­duc­tion design, sim­i­lar enough to The Incal’s to have sparked a law­suit) and maybe, just maybe, a live-action adap­ta­tion from Dri­ve direc­tor Nicholas Wind­ing Refn.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

The Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists (1996)

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Mœbius Illus­trates Paulo Coelho’s Inspi­ra­tional Nov­el The Alchemist (1998)

Mœbius Illus­trates Dante’s Par­adiso

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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