Judging by behind-the-scenes footage of a beardless Jim Henson animating “Drums West,” a 1961 homage to jazz drummer Chico Hamilton, one good sneeze and the party would’ve been over.
Animation is always a painstaking proposition, but the hundreds of tiny paper scraps Henson was contending with in an extremely cramped working space seem downright oppressive compared to the expansive visuals to which they gave rise.
The finished piece’s construction paper fireworks are everything iTunes Visualizer function strives to be. Speaking for myself, I can’t envision any computer-generated abstraction opening a magic portal that suddenly allowed even a philistine like me to appreciate a brush solo steeped in 50’s‑era West Coast cool.
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!
There aren’t many animators out there who would make a movie that justifies the murder of annoying people, but that’s precisely what Russian filmmaker Fyodor Khitruk did with this breakthrough movie Story of One Crime (1962), which you can watch above. The film, about an unassuming clerk who snaps and kills his loud, inconsiderate neighbors with a frying pan, was a landmark in Russia and not just because of its critique of Soviet society — something utterly unthinkable during Stalin’s reign just nine years prior. Unlike previous Russian animated movies – which were largely Marxism-espousing Disney knockoffs – this film presented a clean, modern visual style that seemed more influenced by the likes of Paul Klee than by Disney. The movie shook up the world of Soviet animation and helped start a rebirth of the industry.
Over his long career (he died in 2012 at the age of 95) Khitruk made two kinds of movies: cartoons for children – his most famous being his stylized adaptation of Winnie the Pooh – and socially-aware satires. One in the latter category is his short The Island (1973), which you can see above.
At first blush, it looks like the premise for a New Yorker cartoon – a hairy looking castaway is stuck on a comically small island with a single palm tree. As the movie progresses, a parade of people pass through but don’t help. As the guy gets embroiled in an art heist, converted by missionaries, colonized by an invading army and marketed to by merchants hawking useless goods, it becomes increasingly clear that the titular island is less a sandy spot in the sea than a metaphor for societal isolation. The Island ended up winning the Palme d’Or for the best short at the 1974 Cannes film festival.
Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veeptopus, featuring one new drawing of a vice president with an octopus on his head daily.
You’ve probably seen “Illusion of Choice,” a 2011 infographic detailing how six media conglomerates “control a staggering 90% of what we read, watch, or listen to.” (The entities named are GE, News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS.) Another “Illusion of Choice” infographic from last year documents how “ten huge corporations control the production of almost everything the average person buys.” Are these webs of corporate connection kooky conspiracy theories or genuine cause for alarm? Do the correlations between business entities cause political currents that undermine democracy and media independence? It’s not particularly controversial to think so given the amount of money corporations spend on lobbying and political campaigns. It’s not even particularly controversial to say so, at least for those of us who aren’t employed by, say, Viacom, Time Warner, GE, etc.
But pointing fingers at the corporatocracy may have not gone over so well for famed comedy writer Robert Smigel in 1998 when his recurring animated “Saturday TV Funhouse” segment produced the “Conspiracy Theory Rock” bit above for Saturday Night Live. A parody of the beloved Schoolhouse Rock educational ‘toons of the 70s, “Conspiracy Theory Rock” features a disheveled gentleman—a stereotype of the outsider crackpot—leading a sing-along about the machinations of the “Media-opoly.” Figured as greedy octopi (reminiscent of Matt Taibbi’s “vampire squid”), the media giants here, including GE, Westinghouse, Fox, and Disney, devour the smaller guys—the traditional networks—and “use them to say whatever they please and put down the opinions of anyone who disagrees.” The segment may have raised the ire of GE, who own NBC. It aired once with the original episode but was subsequently pulled from the show in syndication, though it’s been included in subsequent DVD compilations of “Saturday TV Funhouse.”
Now “Conspiracy Theory Rock” is circulating online—amplified by a Marc Maron tweet—as a “banned” clip, a misleading description that feeds right into the story of conspiracy. Editing a sketch from a syndicated comedy show, after all, is not tantamount to banning it. While the short piece makes the usual compelling case against corporate rule, it does so in a tongue-in-cheek way that allows for the possibility that some of these allegations are tenuous exaggerations. Our unwashed presenter, for example, ends the segment mumbling an incoherent non sequitur about Lorne Michaels and Marion Barry attending the same high school. For his part, Michaels has said the segment was cut because it “wasn’t funny.” He’s got a point—it isn’t—but it’s hard to believe it didn’t raise other objections from network executives. It wouldn’t be the first time the show has been accused of censoring a political sketch.
Published in 1864, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground has a reputation as the first existentialist novel. It established a template for the genre with a portrait of an isolated man contemptuous of the sordid society around him, paralyzed by doubt, and obsessed with the pain and absurdity of his own existence. Also true to form, the narrative, though it has a plot of sorts, does not redeem its hero in any sense or offer any resolution to his gnawing inner conflict, concluding, literally, as an unfinished text. Thirteen years later, the great Russian writer, his health in decline but his literary reputation and financial prospects much improved, wrote a similar story, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.”
In this tale, an unnamed narrator also meditates on his absurd state, to the point of suicide. But he observes this spiritual malaise at a distance, recalling the story as an older man from a vantage point of wisdom: “I am a ridiculous person,” the story begins, “Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now.” This character, unlike Dostoevsky’s bitter underground man, has had a transformative experience—a dream in which he experiences the full moral weight of his choices on a grand scale. In a moment of instant enlightenment, our protagonist becomes a kinder, more humane person concerned with the welfare of others.
It is the difference between these two tales which makes the static, internal Underground a very difficult story to adapt to the screen—as far as I know it hasn’t been done—and “Ridiculous Man,” with its vivid dream imagery and dynamic characterization, almost ideal. The 1992 animation (in two parts above) uses painstakingly hand-painted cells to bring to life the alternate world the narrator finds himself navigating in his dream. From the flickering lamps against the dreary, darkened cityscape of the ridiculous man’s waking life to the shifting, sunlit sands of the dreamworld, each detail of the story is finely rendered with meticulous care. Drawn and directed by Russian animator Alexander Petrov—who won an Academy Award for his 1999 adaptation of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea—this is clearly a labor of love, and of tremendous skill and patience.
The technique Petrov uses, writes Galina Saubanova, is one of“Finger Painting”: “Forcing the paint on the glass, the artist draws with his fingers, using brushes only in exceptional cases. One figure is one film frame, which flashes within 1/24 of a second while watching. Petrov draws more than a thousand paintings for one minute of his film.” In Russian with English subtitles taken from Constance Garnett’s translation, the twenty-minute “animated painting” sublimely realizes Dostoevsky’s tale of personal transformation with a lightness and lyricism that a live-action film cannot duplicate, although a 1990 BBC production called “The Dream” certainly has much to recommend it. If you like Petrov’s work, be sure to watch his Old Man and the Seahere. Also online are his short films “The Mermaid” (1997) and “My Love” (2006).
Osamu Tezuka is one of the great creative forces of the 20th century. Known in his native Japan as the “god of manga,” Tezuka was mind-bogglingly productive, cranking out around 170,000 pages of comics in his 60 years of life. He almost single-handedly made manga respectable to read for adults, creating tales that were both universal and emotionally complex. And he worked in pretty much every genre you can imagine from horror, to girly fantasy, to an epic series about the life of the Buddha. Yet of all of Tezuka’s many volumes of comics, his best beloved work was Tetsuwan Atomu, otherwise known as Astro Boy.
In 1962, Tezuka fulfilled a childhood dream by opening an animation studio. One of his first projects was to adapt was Astro Boy. The television series premiered in 1963 and proved to be hugely popular in Japan. It wasn’t long before American TV started airing dubbed versions of the show. You can see the very first episode, “Birth of Astro Boy,” above.
After his son dies in a freak car accident, scientist Dr. Astor Boynton is driven mad by grief. He develops an insane laugh and, with it, an equally insane plan to build a robot who looks just like his dead son. After a Frankenstein-esque montage, Astro Boy is born. All seems well for the adorable, sweet-natured robot, until Boynton freaks out over Astro Boy’s lack of growth. “I’ve been a good father to you, haven’t I?” he whines. “Well then, why can’t you be a good son to me and grow up to be a normal human adult?” How’s that for a parental guilt trip?
So Dr. Boynton casts Astro Boy out, selling him into slavery to The Great Cacciatore, an evil circus ringleader who forces him to be the world’s cutest robot gladiator. Fortunately, Dr. Elefun, a colleague of Dr. Boynton, takes pity on Astro Boy and works to free him from his bondage.
The whole story plays out as if Mary Shelley and Fritz Lang collaborated to make Dumbo. Tezuka throws in a lot of wacky slapstick comedy, which just barely takes the edge off the story’s Dickensian melodrama, which relentlessly mines all those primal fears you thought you got over. In short, it’s brilliant.
The series ran for two years in the States and then continued on re-runs thoughout the decade. One of the shows fans was apparently Stanley Kubrick. During the mid-60s, Kubrick sent Tezuka a letter asking if he would be interested in helping with the art direction and design of his new movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The offer would have required that Tezuka spend a year or more in London. Though greatly flattered, Tezuka turned the offer down. The workaholic artist simply couldn’t spend that much time away from his studio. One has to wonder what Kubrick’s masterpiece would have looked like seen through the prism of Tezuka.
In 2001, Steven Spielberg premiered a movie that was a long gestating project of Kubrick’s – the wildly underrated A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The parallels between that movie, about a robot child cast out by his parents into a cruel world, and Astro Boy are striking. Kubrick, as it turns out, might have been even a bigger fan of the God of Manga than previously thought.
Here’s the trailer for A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veeptopus, featuring one new drawing of a vice president with an octopus on his head daily.
Sophocles and Aeschylus may be spinning in their graves. Or, who knows, they may be taking some delight in this bizarre twist on the Oedipus myth. Running 8 minutes, Jason Wishnow’s 2004 film puts vegetables in the starring roles. One of the first stop-motion films shot with a digital still camera, Oedipus took two years to make with a volunteer staff of 100. But the hard work paid off.
The film has since been screened at 70+ film festivals and was eventually acquired by the Sundance Channel. Separate videos show you the behind-the-scenes making of the film (middle), plus the storyboards used during production (bottom). This video first appeared on our site in 2011, and, stellar as it is, we’re delighted to bring it back for readers who have joined us since. Hope you enjoy.
When I was a child, my father, enchanted by the notion that I might someday provide live piano accompaniment to his evening cocktails, signed me up for lessons with a mild-mannered widow who—if memory serves—charged 50¢ an hour.
Had I only been forced to practice more regularly, I’d have no trouble remembering the exact price of these lessons. My memory would be a supremely robust thing of beauty. Ditto my math skills, my cognitive function, my ability to multitask.
Instead, my dad eventually conceded that I was not cut out to be a musician (or a ballerina, or a tennis whiz…) and Mrs. Arnold was out a pupil.
Would that I stuck with it beyond my halting versions of “The Entertainer” and “Für Elise.” According to the TED-Ed video above, playing an instrument is one of the very best things you can do for your brain. Talent doesn’t matter in this context, just ongoing practice.
Neuroscientists using fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and PET (Positron Emission Tomography) technology to monitor the brain activity of subjects listening to music saw engagement in many areas, but when the subjects traded in headphones for actual instruments, this activity morphed into a grand fireworks display.
(The animated explanation of the interplay between various musically engaged areas of the brain suggests the New York City subway map, a metaphor I find more apt.)
This massive full brain workout is available to anyone willing to put in the time with an instrument. Reading the score, figuring out timing and fingering, and pouring one’s soul into creative interpretation results in an interoffice cerebral communication that strengthens the corpus calossum and executive function.
Though to bring up the specter of another stereotype, stay away from the hard stuff, guys…don’t fry those beautiful minds.
If you’d like to know more about the scientific implications of music lessons, WBUR’s series “Brain Matters” has a good overview here. And good luck breaking the good news to your children.
1974 was a cynical time. That was the year that Nixon resigned after the grueling Watergate scandal, Vietnam War was finally grinding to a halt and, thanks to the Oil Shock of ’73, the economy was in the toilet. It was also a time when TV execs were scrambling to keep up with America’s rapidly changing cultural tastes. Audiences wanted something with a little edge. The TV adaptation of Robert Altman’s lacerating war comedy MASH became a huge hit. As did All in the Family, about everyone’s favorite armchair bigot Archie Bunker. Saturday Night Live was just a year away from premiering. So it isn’t surprising that execs from ABC approached the “usual gang of idiots” at Mad Magazine — that fount of anti-authoritarian satire — about making a series. The resulting pilot, which was later rebranded as a TV special, never aired because it provided way too much edge for the network. You can watch it above.
The show, culled from some of the better bits from the magazine, features art from Don Martin, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee and Dave Berg – names that will be very familiar to you if you grew up obsessively reading the magazine as a child, like I did – and the animation was supervised by Jimmy Murakami along with Chris Ishii and Gordon Bellamy.
The network claimed that the show was shelved because it had too much “adult” humor. In this post-South Park, post-Family Guy world, the adult humor in this show, by comparison, seems downright tame. What the Mad Magazine TV Special does have in abundance is withering barbs. Something about translating the cynical, adolescent humor of the magazine from the page to screen made its satire feel much, much sharper. During their parody of The Godfather, called the Oddfather, mafia don Vito Minestrone (groan) tells a group of mobsters that their gang war must stop. “We must stop destroying each other and start destroying the plain, ordinary citizens again. Like normal American businessmen.”
The show’s most caustic zingers, however, are reserved for America’s bloated, complacent auto industry where a Walter Cronkite-like journalist interviews auto exec Edsel Lemon. In five or so minutes, the bit unsparingly lays out why GM and Ford eventually lost out to Toyota and Honda – crappy cars, lousy safety, and an upper management that was as mendacious as it was shortsighted. While field testing a new model, which involved coasting the car down a hill, Lemon quips, “If our prototype can go 500 feet without falling apart we’ll put it into production.” This seemingly explains how the Ford Pinto got made.
In the end, the networks squeamishness with the show was more due to its ridicule of an industry with deep pockets than with its toilet humor. As Dick DeBatolo, the MAD’s maddest writer, who penned much of the show noted, “Nobody wanted to sponsor a show that made fun of products that were advertised on TV, like car manufacturers.”
Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veeptopus, featuring pictures of vice presidents with octopuses on their heads.
We're hoping to rely on loyal readers, rather than erratic ads. Please click the Donate button and support Open Culture. You can use Paypal, Venmo, Patreon, even Crypto! We thank you!
Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
