David Lynch Teaches Typing: A New Interactive Comedy Game

in Comedy, Computer Science, Film, Games, How to Learn for Free, Technology, Television | March 2nd, 2018

Typ­ing pro­grams demand some patience on the part of the stu­dent, and David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is no excep­tion.

You’ve got 90 sec­onds to get accli­mat­ed to the crud­dy flop­py disc-era graph­ics and the cacoph­o­nous voice of your instruc­tor, a dead ringer for FBI Deputy Direc­tor Gor­don Cole, the hard-of-hear­ing char­ac­ter direc­tor David Lynch played on his sem­i­nal ear­ly 90s series, Twin Peaks.

Things perk up about a minute and a half in, when stu­dents are instruct­ed to place their left ring fin­gers in an undu­lat­ing bug to the left of their key­boards.

That sec­ond “in”? Not a typo (though you’ll notice plen­ty of no doubt inten­tion­al boo-boos in the teacher’s pre-pro­grammed respons­es…)

The bug in ques­tion may well put you in mind of the mys­te­ri­ous baby in Lynch’s first fea­ture length film, 1977’s Eraser­head.

On the oth­er hand, it might not.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is actu­al­ly a short inter­ac­tive com­e­dy game, and many of the mil­len­ni­al review­ers cov­er­ing that beat have had to play catch-up in order to catch the many nods to the director’s work con­tained there­in.

One of our favorites is the Apple-esque name of the program’s retro com­put­er, and we’ll wager that fre­quent Lynch col­lab­o­ra­tor, actor Kyle MacLach­lan, would agree.

Anoth­er ref­er­ence that has thus far elud­ed online gam­ing enthu­si­asts in their 20s is Mavis Bea­con Teach­es Typ­ing. Take a peek below at what the vir­tu­al typ­ing tutor’s graph­ics looked like around the time the orig­i­nal Twin Peaks aired to dis­cov­er the cre­ators of David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing’s oth­er inspi­ra­tion.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is avail­able for free down­load here. If you’re anx­ious that doing so might open you up to a tech­ni­cal bug of night­mar­ish pro­por­tions, stick with watch­ing the play through at the top of the page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

“The Art of David Lynch”— How Rene Magritte, Edward Hop­per & Fran­cis Bacon Influ­enced David Lynch’s Cin­e­mat­ic Vision

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her March 20 in New York City for the sec­ond edi­tion of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, a low bud­get vari­ety show born of a 1920 man­u­al for Girl Scout Camp Direc­tors. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Judd Apatow Teaches the Craft of Comedy: A New Online Course from MasterClass

in Comedy, Online Courses | March 2nd, 2018

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

School just got fun. And fun­ny. Days after announc­ing that New York­er author Mal­colm Glad­well will teach his first online course on writ­ing, Mas­ter­Class revealed that Judd Apa­tow, the direc­tor of umpteen fun­ny films (The 40-Year-Old Vir­gin, Knocked Up, This Is 40, etc.), will present his own course on com­e­dy, offer­ings lessons on how to “cre­ate hilar­i­ous sto­ry­lines, write great stand-up, and direct come­dies that leave audi­ences laugh­ing.”

In 32 video lessons, stu­dents will learn how to: find comedic inspi­ra­tion; mine your life for mate­r­i­al; out­line and struc­ture sto­ries for film and TV; write stand-up mate­r­i­al; write com­ic dia­logue; pitch projects to stu­dios and net­works; work with actors; and nav­i­gate the enter­tain­ment indus­try. Now open for enroll­ment, the course will offi­cial­ly get start­ed this spring. Any­one look­ing to study com­e­dy can also imme­di­ate­ly get start­ed with an exist­ing com­e­dy course taught by Steve Mar­tin.

Each Mas­ter­Class course costs $90. But, for $180, you can get an annu­al pass to every course in the Mas­ter­Class cat­a­logue.

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:

Watch Steve Mar­tin Make His First TV Appear­ance: The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour (1968)

Bill Hicks’ 12 Prin­ci­ples of Com­e­dy

Steve Mar­tin & Robin Williams Riff on Math, Physics, Ein­stein & Picas­so in a Heady Com­e­dy Rou­tine (2002)

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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 Improbable Time When Orson Welles Interviewed Andy Kaufman (1982)

in Comedy, Television | December 27th, 2017

“Sit­coms are the low­est form of enter­tain­ment,” declares Andy Kauf­man as por­trayed by Jim Car­rey in Milos For­man’s biopic Man on the Moon. “I mean, it’s just stu­pid jokes and canned laugh­ter.” The scene comes in the peri­od of Kauf­man’s life in the late 1970s when, grow­ing ever more well-known on the back of acts like his “For­eign Man” char­ac­ter, he receives an offer to take part in ABC’s Taxi. The real-life Kauf­man, even­tu­al­ly con­vinced to join the show’s cast, devel­oped the For­eign Man into the unplace­able mechan­ic Lat­ka Gavras. Quite pos­si­bly Taxi’s most mem­o­rable char­ac­ter, Lat­ka also won the appre­ci­a­tion of no less demand­ing a cul­tur­al fig­ure than Orson Welles.

Guest-host­ing the Merv Grif­fin Show in June of 1982, Welles describes Taxi as a show that has “kept tele­vi­sion from being a crim­i­nal felony” just before bring­ing Kauf­man on for a brief (and unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly straight­for­ward) chat. He heaps praise on Kauf­man’s per­for­mance as Lat­ka, adding, “I want to know why it is that you go and wres­tle with peo­ple when you can act so well.” Kauf­man had shown up wear­ing a neck brace, an acces­so­ry sig­ni­fy­ing the end of his stint as a pro­fes­sion­al wrestler, one of the many inex­plic­a­ble but some­how com­pelling choic­es in a short career that blurred the lines between com­e­dy, per­for­mance art, and life itself.

“Nobody ever came from nowhere more com­plete­ly,” Welles says, draw­ing a big stu­dio-audi­ence laugh with this descrip­tion of not just Lat­ka but Kauf­man as well. Asked how he came up with such a dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter voice, Kauf­man says only that he “grew up in New York, and you hear a lot of dif­fer­ent voic­es in New York” (“You don’t hear that one,” replies Welles). He also cites the accents of a high-school friend from South Amer­i­ca and a col­lege room­mate from Iran. Less than four years lat­er, both Kauf­man and Welles would be gone (and actor Ron Glass, look­ing on from the oth­er side of the couch, joined them this past Novem­ber).

Or at least both men would be gone if you don’t cred­it the rumors about Kauf­man hav­ing elab­o­rate­ly faked his death. “I don’t know whether it’s the inno­cence of the fel­low or the feel­ing you have that he is not stu­pid­er than every­body, but maybe smarter, that adds to the fas­ci­na­tion,” Welles says. Again he speaks osten­si­bly of Kauf­man’s For­eign Man/Latka per­sona, but his words apply equal­ly to the man who not just played but peri­od­i­cal­ly — and some­times unpre­dictably — became him. 33 years after Kauf­man’s death, or in any case dis­ap­pear­ance from life, that fas­ci­na­tion remains as strong as ever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Look Back at Andy Kauf­man: Absurd Com­ic Per­for­mance Artist and Endear­ing Weirdo

Orson Welles Meets H.G. Wells in 1940: The Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

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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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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Dr. Demento’s New Punk Album Features William Shatner Singing The Cramps, Weird Al Yankovic Singing The Ramones & Much More

in Comedy, Music | December 19th, 2017

Call­ing all fans of the Dr. Demen­to Show. The new album, Dr. Demen­to Cov­ered in Punk, fea­tures “dement­ed” cov­ers of clas­sic punk tunes and “30 cov­ers of songs orig­i­nal­ly aired on the Dr. Demen­to radio show.” Think “Fish Heads.”

On the nos­tal­gia-induc­ing album, you can notably enjoy two fix­tures of Amer­i­can odd­ball cul­ture, William Shat­ner and Weird Al Yankovic, singing “The Garbage­man” by The Cramps (above) and The Ramones’ “Beat on the Brat” (below). The Mis­fits, Joan Jett, Fred Schnei­der of the B52s, the Van­dals, The Dead Milk­men, The Meatmen–they all make an appear­ance on the album too. It’s due out today.

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 His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016

The Cramps Play a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal in Napa, Cal­i­for­nia in 1978: The Punk­est of Punk Con­certs

Two Leg­ends: Weird Al Yankovic “Inter­views” James Brown (1986)

DC’s Leg­endary Punk Label Dischord Records Makes Its Entire Music Cat­a­log Free to Stream Online

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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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How Seinfeld, the Sitcom Famously “About Nothing,” Is Like Gustave Flaubert’s Novels About Nothing

in Comedy, Literature, Television | November 17th, 2017

“A show about noth­ing”: peo­ple have described Sein­feld that way for decades, but cre­ators Jer­ry Sein­feld and Lar­ry David did­n’t set out to cre­ate any­thing of the kind. In fact, with Sein­feld him­self already estab­lished as a stand-up come­di­an, they orig­i­nal­ly pitched to NBC a show about how a com­ic finds mate­r­i­al in his day-to-day life. But in its 43rd episode, when the series had become a major cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non, Sein­feld’s char­ac­ter and Jason Alexan­der’s George Costan­za (whom David based on him­self) pitch a show to tele­vi­sion exec­u­tives where “noth­ing hap­pens,” and fans seized upon the truth about Sein­feld they saw reflect­ed in that joke.

In the video essay above, Evan Puschak, known as the Nerd­writer, fig­ures out why. It’s a cul­tur­al and intel­lec­tu­al jour­ney that takes him back to the 19th-cen­tu­ry nov­els of Gus­tave Flaubert. “Flaubert was a pio­neer of lit­er­ary real­ism, in large part respon­si­ble for rais­ing the sta­tus of the nov­el to that of a high art,” says Puschak.

In 1852, Flaubert wrote a let­ter describ­ing his ambi­tion to write “a book about noth­ing, a book depen­dent on noth­ing exter­nal, which would be held togeth­er by the inter­nal strength of its style.” Instead of want­i­ng to “string you along with mul­ti­ple sus­pense-height­en­ing nar­ra­tive devel­op­ments,” in Puschak’s view, “he wants to bring you into the text itself, to look there for the care­ful­ly con­struct­ed mean­ings that he’s built for you.”

And so, in their own way, do Sein­feld and David in the sit­com that became and remains so beloved in large part with its numer­ous depar­tures from the tra­di­tions the form had estab­lished over the past forty years. “It was­n’t until Sein­feld that the con­ven­tions of the sit­com were decon­struct­ed ful­ly, when all forms of uni­ty, famil­ial and espe­cial­ly roman­tic, were whole­heart­ed­ly aban­doned. For Sein­feld, these addi­tion­al ele­ments were just so much fluff,” dis­trac­tions from telling a sto­ry “held togeth­er by the inter­nal strength of its com­e­dy.” The crit­ic James Wood, quot­ed in this video, once wrote that “nov­el­ists should thank Flaubert the way poets thank spring: it real­ly all begins with him.” By the same token, two epochs exist for the writ­ers of sit­coms: before Sein­feld and after. Not bad for a show about noth­ing — or not about noth­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jacques Der­ri­da on Sein­feld: “Decon­struc­tion Doesn’t Pro­duce Any Sit­com”

What’s the Deal with Pop Tarts? Jer­ry Sein­feld Explains How to Write a Joke

Watch a New, “Orig­i­nal” Episode of Sein­feld Per­formed Live on Stage

Sein­feld & Noth­ing­ness: A Super­cut of the Show’s Emp­ti­est Moments

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

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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