How the Great George Carlin Showed Louis CK the Way to Success (NSFW)

in Comedy, Life | February 18th, 2012

There’s prob­a­bly not a standup come­di­an big­ger than Louis CK right now. His FX tele­vi­sion show, Louie, earned him two Emmy Award nom­i­na­tions in 2011, and his recent com­e­dy spe­cial, Live at the Bea­con The­ater, made his­to­ry when CK dis­trib­uted the show via the web (not HBO) and net­ted $1,000,000 in sales in a mat­ter of days.

Louis CK is rid­ing a good wave. But times weren’t always so easy. Back in 2010, CK spoke at a trib­ute to George Car­lin (host­ed at the ven­er­a­ble New York Pub­lic Library) and revis­it­ed his ear­ly days in the pro­fes­sion. For years — actu­al­ly 15 long years — CK per­formed the same old act and spun his wheels. Then he looked to Car­lin and turned his career around. As you might expect, the sto­ry is laced with some pro­fan­i­ty. (Come on, it’s Louis CK talk­ing about George Car­lin!) But, when you strip the lan­guage away, you get a good life les­son. Per­se­ver­ance counts. But so does per­spec­tive, get­ting the right per­spec­tive.

Louis CK’s talk appears above. You can find the full Car­lin trib­ute here. And don’t miss a very relat­ed video where Car­lin describes the turn­ing point in his own life — the moment when he learned “not to give a shit” and his com­ic genius came into full bloom.

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David Lynch Falls in Love: A Classic Scene From Twin Peaks

in Comedy, Television | February 14th, 2012

They say a man falls in love through his eyes, a woman through her ears. In this scene from Twin Peaks, David Lynch pours on the ear-shat­ter­ing charm. The scene is from episode 25 of the sec­ond and final sea­son (1991). Lynch makes a cameo appear­ance as Gor­don Cole, the hard-of-hear­ing region­al bureau chief of the FBI, who has arrived in town to help agent Dale Coop­er (Kyle MacLach­lan) with an inves­ti­ga­tion. When the two men stop by at the Dou­ble R Din­er for a bite to eat, Cole is instant­ly smit­ten by the pret­ty wait­ress, Shelly John­son (Mäd­chen Amick). “Excuse me, Coop,” he says suave­ly, “while I try my hand in a lit­tle counter Esperan­to.” What hap­pens next is a miracle–or maybe just a phe­nom­e­non.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

David Lynch’s Eraser­head Remade in Clay

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

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Werner Herzog Has a Beef With Chickens

in Comedy, Film, Random | February 8th, 2012

It’s part of the beau­ty of Wern­er Her­zog. His films engross us, and the direc­tor pro­vides the enter­tain­ment on the side. You have seen him take a bul­let dur­ing an inter­view in LA. You’ve heard him read “Go the F**k to Sleep” in New York City. And, of course, you’ve watched him eat his shoe (lit­er­al­ly!) after loos­ing a bet to fel­low film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris. Well, today we give you the lat­est, great­est Her­zog moment — his 40 sec­ond dis­course on why he has a beef with chick­ens. h/t Coudal.com

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Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Read in Celebrity Voices

in Comedy, Literature | February 2nd, 2012

Last sum­mer, actor Jim Meski­men pro­duced a viral video where he imper­son­at­ed 25 famous fig­ures recit­ing Clarence’s mono­logue from Shake­speare’s great his­to­ry play, Richard III. Woody Allen, Jack Nichol­son, Jim­my Stew­art — they all made an appear­ance.

Now, Meski­men returns with a new cast of char­ac­ters, and this time he’s read­ing lines from Marc Antony’s famous speech in Julius Cae­sar.

If you live in LA, you can see the impres­sion­ist per­form live at The Act­ing Cen­ter on Feb­ru­ary 17 & 18 at 8 p.m. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nine Imper­son­ations by Kevin Spacey in Six Min­utes

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Reads Shake­speare

William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare

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The Muppets Strike Back at Fox!

in Comedy, Politics | January 30th, 2012

In Fox’s world, noth­ing good is ter­ri­bly safe. Even the lov­able Mup­pets fall under with­er­ing attack.

Last month, Fox Busi­ness spent sev­en min­utes (below) unrav­el­ing the left wing con­spir­a­cy in the lat­est Mup­pet movie. Then the Mup­pets, not tak­ing things lying down, struck back. Appear­ing at a press con­fer­ence in Lon­don last week, Ker­mit the Frog and Miss Pig­gy rebutted Fox’s charges in one com­ic minute. It’s a pret­ty fun­ny clip. But the best part is watch­ing a major news out­let argue with pup­pets.

If you need some­thing to make you feel bet­ter about the world, don’t miss Jim Hen­son’s 1969 primer on how to make your own pup­pets, using noth­ing oth­er than house­hold items. H/T SF Gate

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Nine PAC Ads from Stephen Colbert Spoof U.S. Election System

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Politics | January 24th, 2012

When the Supreme Court, in its infi­nite wis­dom, decid­ed that cor­po­ra­tions enjoy the free speech rights of indi­vid­u­als, it took a bad cam­paign finance sys­tem and made it worse. Sud­den­ly, free-spend­ing PACs, rep­re­sent­ing pow­er­ful busi­ness inter­ests, could flood our cam­paign finance sys­tem with unprece­dent­ed amounts of mon­ey and dis­tort the way we elect lead­ers in the Unit­ed States. In the ear­ly days of the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion process, we’re already see­ing the results. Super PACs, some­times receiv­ing $5 mil­lion from one indi­vid­ual, are run­ning attack ads — lots of attack ads — in pri­ma­ry states. And the real del­uge has yet to come. Just wait until next fall.

What to do about the sanc­tioned dis­tor­tion of our polit­i­cal sys­tem? It’s hard to be opti­mistic when fix­ing the prob­lem would real­is­ti­cal­ly require a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment. But that’s what Lawrence Lessig (Har­vard law pro­fes­sor and founder of Cre­ative Com­mons) is try­ing to do. Appear­ing at Google (see below), Lessig describes how spe­cial inter­ests cor­rupt our polit­i­cal sys­tem, and what we can do to stop it. But even Lessig will admit that it’s an uphill bat­tle.

That leaves us with the next best solu­tion: turn a joke of an elec­tion sys­tem into a good joke. Enter Stephen Col­bert. The come­di­an has cre­at­ed his own Super PAC (run by Jon Stew­art) that comes com­plete with its own TV ads. The par­o­dy above — an attack ad on attack ads — makes its point pret­ty effec­tive­ly. You can watch eight more Col­bert PAC com­mer­cials here, and make a dona­tion to his PAC here. And, if you’re feel­ing gen­er­ous, you can show your sup­port for Open Cul­ture here.

Break­ing News: Stephen Col­bert ends qua­si-pres­i­den­tial cam­paign

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Christopher Walken Reads The Three Little Pigs, The Raven, and a Little Lady Gaga

in Books, Comedy, Film | January 20th, 2012

Here we go again. We’re get­ting meta with read­ings by the great Christo­pher Walken. It all starts with the actor appear­ing on a 1993 broad­cast of the British TV series “Sat­ur­day Zoo” host­ed by Jonathan Ross, and he’s read­ing and riff­ing on the beloved fairy tale, The Sto­ry of the Three Lit­tle Pigs. The poten­tial­ly ter­ri­fy­ing sto­ry is unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly jol­ly. Walken goes for laughs, not chills. The same can’t be said for the next tale.

We’re not clear on the back­sto­ry of this read­ing. But we do know Walken is read­ing Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, The Raven, and stays true to the orig­i­nal text pub­lished in 1845. The Raven made Poe famous then, and it remains influ­en­tial today — so much so they named a foot­ball team after the poem. How many oth­er sports teams can make such a claim?

And then we come full cir­cle again. Almost 16 years after Walken’s read­ing of The Three Lit­tle Pigs, the star returned to anoth­er show host­ed by Jonathan Ross (BBC’s Fri­day Night) and served up a sec­ond com­ic read­ing. This time it’s â€śPok­er Face” by the inescapable Lady Gaga.

Walken read­ing Where the Wild Things Are by Mau­rice Sendak? If only, if only .….

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Watch Terry Gilliam’s Animated Short, The Christmas Card (1968)

in Animation, Art, Comedy | December 24th, 2011

In 1968, Ter­ry Gilliam was a young Amer­i­can car­toon­ist liv­ing in Lon­don. He was hav­ing trou­ble mak­ing a liv­ing from mag­a­zine work, so his friend John Cleese sug­gest­ed he get in touch with Humphrey Bar­clay, who was pro­duc­ing a slight­ly sub­ver­sive tele­vi­sion show for chil­dren called Do Not Adjust Your Set.

Sub­ti­tled “The Fair­ly Point­less Show,” it fea­tured a group of pre­vi­ous­ly unknown actors includ­ing Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Ter­ry Jones, and attract­ed a cult fol­low­ing among adults. Bar­clay looked at Gilliam’s port­fo­lio and decid­ed he would fit right in.

For one ear­ly assign­ment, Gilliam was asked to pre­pare some­thing for a spe­cial show to be broad­cast on Christ­mas day, 1968, called Do Not Adjust Your Stock­ing. Look­ing for inspi­ra­tion, he decid­ed to vis­it the Tate Gallery. In The Pythons Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of the Pythons, Gilliam remem­bered the project and how it fig­ured into his emerg­ing artis­tic style:

I went down to the Tate and they’ve got a huge col­lec­tion of Vic­to­ri­an Christ­mas cards so I went through the col­lec­tion and pho­to­copied things and start­ed mov­ing them around. So the style just devel­oped out of that rather than any plan­ning being involved. I nev­er analysed the stuff, I just did it the quick­est, eas­i­est way. And I could use images I real­ly loved.

The result (above) is a hilar­i­ous free-asso­ci­a­tion­al send-up of tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas card motifs. In addi­tion to being aired on the show, The Christ­mas Card was incor­po­rat­ed into Gilliam’s short debut film from 1968, Sto­ry­time, which is part of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

For an update of Gilliam’s twist­ed take on Christmas–a dark­er rework­ing of his Malev­o­lent San­ta theme in The Christ­mas Card–look below for a draw­ing Gilliam post­ed a few days ago on his Face­book page. And as the man says, you bet­ter watch out!

via Bleed­ing Cool

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Ter­ry Gilliam (Mon­ty Python) Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Ani­ma­tion

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