Tom Waits Names 14 of His Favorite Art Films

in Film, Music | April 6th, 2016

Tom Waits is that rare breed of artist who has equal amounts of cred­i­bil­i­ty in the art house the­aters and on the punk rock street. His depres­sion-era every­man blues and drunk­en skid row laments ring just as true as his high-con­cept vaude­ville the­ater act and cock­tail lounge per­for­mance art. Hav­ing the abil­i­ty to con­vinc­ing­ly set his brow high or low makes Waits an excel­lent ambas­sador for film, a medi­um sad­ly riv­en by brow height. While cable TV and Net­flix may be the art hous­es of the 21st cen­tu­ry, let’s not give up on the cul­tur­al reach of lega­cy archives like the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion just yet. Not before we hear Waits weigh in on his favorite art films.

Waits’ fil­mog­ra­phy as an actor is itself a tes­ta­ment to his brow-span­ning abilities—from such wide-release fare as Drac­u­la and Sev­en Psy­chopaths to the scrap­py, inti­mate films of Jim Jar­musch, and more or less every­thing in-between. The threads that run through all of his film choic­es as an actor are a cer­tain sur­re­al sense of humor and the off-kil­ter human­i­ty and for­mal anar­chy we know so well from his musi­cal choic­es.

We see sim­i­lar pro­cliv­i­ties in Waits’ film favorites, as com­piled by Chris Ambro­sio at Cri­te­ri­on. Most of the choic­es are of the, “Ah, of course” vari­ety in that these films so per­fect­ly explain, or illus­trate, the Tom Waits uni­verse. We might imag­ine many of them with alter­nate sound­tracks of songs from Real Gone, Sword­fishtrom­bones, Bone Machine, etc.

First, up, of course, Fellini’s neo­re­al­ist La Stra­da, a film about the sad­dest, sweet­est, gruffest trav­el­ing cir­cus act ever. Waits also con­fess­es a pas­sion for all of the beau­ti­ful­ly over­wrought films of Carl Theodor Drey­er, includ­ing the pro­found and dis­turb­ing 1928 The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc and 1932 hor­ror clas­sic Vampyr (both above). You can see the full list of Waits’ favs below. Let your pas­sion for art film be rekin­dled, and when watch­ing the silent films, con­sid­er putting on some Mule Vari­a­tions or Blood Mon­ey. You’ll prob­a­bly find it fits per­fect­ly.

  1. La Stra­da, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni (U.S. read­ers: watch Fellini’s films free on Hulu)
  2. Zato­ichi: The Blind Swords­man
  3. Put­ney Swope, Robert Downey, Sr.
  4. Every­thing by Carl Theodor Drey­er
  5. Amar­cord, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni
  6. 8 1/2, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni
  7. The Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton
  8. Wise Blood, John Hus­ton
  9. Two-Lane Black­top, Monte Hell­man
  10. Eraser­head, David Lynch
  11. Pick­up on South Street, Samuel Fuller
  12. Ikiru, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa
  13. Ver­non, Flori­da, Errol Mor­ris
  14. In a Lone­ly Place, Nicholas Ray

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free on Hulu: Stream Fellini’s 8 1/2, La Stra­da & Oth­er Clas­sic & Con­tem­po­rary Films

Tom Waits, Play­ing the Down-and-Out Barfly, Appears in Clas­sic 1978 TV Per­for­mance

The Tom Waits Map: A Map­ping of Every Place Waits Has Sung About, From L.A. to Africa’s Jun­gles

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

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

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Watch Heavy Metal Parking Lot, the Cult Classic Film That Ranks as One of the “Great Rock Documentaries” of All Time

in Film, Music | April 5th, 2016

Grow­ing up in the Wash­ing­ton, DC sub­urbs in the 80s and 90s among a cer­tain sub­cul­ture of dis­af­fect­ed youth meant that the short cult doc­u­men­tary Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot had an espe­cial­ly leg­endary sta­tus. Every­body seemed to know a friend of a friend’s old­er broth­er or sis­ter who had been caught on cam­era by film­mak­ers John Heyn and Jeff Kru­lik out­side that 1986 Judas Priest con­cert at Largo, Mary­land’s Cap­i­tal Cen­tre (RIP). But geo­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty alone to the tit­u­lar park­ing lot does not explain the 17-minute video’s pop­u­lar­i­ty.

Since its first screen­ing at a club called DC Space, Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot has become one of the most beloved of rock films world­wide, a “soci­o­log­i­cal study of head­bangers,” writes Rolling Stone, who rank the short at num­ber 33 in their list of the 40 Great­est Rock Doc­u­men­taries. “Decades before the inter­net made shar­ing video clips as sim­ple as post­ing to Twit­ter or Face­book,” writes The Verge, “Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot caught on, not through offi­cial dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels, but through an under­ground net­work of fans that would dub VHS copies and pass them along.” (The movie got a big boost when the film­mak­ers gave a copy to DC-area native Dave Grohl, who kept it on reg­u­lar rota­tion on the Nir­vana tour bus.)

What makes this exposé of met­al fans so spe­cial? Although there’s undoubt­ed­ly a seg­ment of its view­ers who laugh at the film’s col­lec­tion of most­ly anony­mous mid-eight­ies met­al fans, for the most part, Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot’s appeal has not been that of so much viral inter­net content—mean-spirited com­e­dy at the expense of naïve ama­teurs. Thought it’s tempt­ing, as Rolling Stone remarks, “to mock these mul­let-afflict­ed met­al­heads… there’s an unde­ni­able sweet­ness that per­me­ates” the mini-doc and its sub­jects’ “inno­cent quest for rock & roll kicks.”

The sheer goofi­ness and joy­ous aban­don that is 80s heavy met­al con­tributes to the film’s char­ac­ter. And much of the love of Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot comes from the same nos­tal­gic place as that for Dazed and Con­fused except that its char­ac­ters are the real deal. The doc­u­men­tary presents an authen­tic record of mid-80s sub­ur­ban youth in Amer­i­ca. It’s like­ly cos­tume design­ers of Richard Lin­klater’s fol­low-up peri­od piece Every­body Wants Some!! stud­ied Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot in detail.

Like Lin­klater’s testos­terone-heavy films, Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot is large­ly dom­i­nat­ed by dudes—metal bros who “may occa­sion­al­ly be inar­tic­u­late, sex­ist and obnox­ious.” And yet, even fans of the film who grew up in more enlight­ened times and places—and who may not have had friends who looked just like these guys—have found much to love in the movie. The slice-of-life char­ac­ter stud­ies and inter­views cre­ate “a time cap­sule,” Kru­lik told the Verge on the doc­u­men­tary’s 30th anniver­sary screen­ing, one sur­pris­ing­ly still “a lit­tle bit shock­ing.”

On the oth­er hand, Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot remains a vital, time­less record of fandom—of the unvar­nished, uncrit­i­cal devo­tion young lovers of any pop cul­ture phe­nom­e­non bestow upon their object. And like cer­tain oth­er doc­u­men­taries about fandom—such as 1997’s Trekkies—Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot allows its sub­jects to ful­ly be them­selves, with­out judg­ment or con­de­scen­sion. Even as ordi­nary, most­ly name­less, most­ly stoned and shirt­less kids in the sub­urbs, those selves prove to be as at least as enter­tain­ing as the flam­boy­ant band they came to see.

Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Above you can also watch, “Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot Alum­ni: Where Are They Now,” the sequel to our fea­tured film. 

via The Verge/Dead Spin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are All Right: New Study Sug­gests They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Punk & Heavy Met­al Music Makes Lis­ten­ers Hap­py and Calm, Not Aggres­sive, Accord­ing to New Aus­tralian Study

Heavy Met­al: BBC Film Explores the Music, Per­son­al­i­ties & Great Cloth­ing That Hit the Stage in the 1980s

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

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50 Must-See Documentaries, Selected by 10 Influential Documentary Filmmakers

in Film | March 31st, 2016

How to get a han­dle on doc­u­men­tary film? Giv­en not just the quan­ti­ty but the wide vari­ety of works in the field, with all their vast dif­fer­ences in style, dura­tion, approach, and epis­te­mol­o­gy, get­ting up to speed with the state of the art (or per­haps you con­sid­er it a form of essay, or of jour­nal­ism) can seem a daunt­ing task indeed. But as luck would have it, ten experts on doc­u­men­tary film — doc­u­men­tar­i­ans them­selves, in fact — have just done some of the work for you, select­ing a total of “Fifty Doc­u­men­taries You Need to See” for The Guardian.

Few pic­tures in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma have played as impor­tant a role in the for­ma­tion of a genre as has Dzi­ga Ver­tov’s 1929 Man with a Movie Cam­era, which Man on Wire direc­tor James Marsh named as an essen­tial. “This was the first tru­ly sub­ver­sive, play­ful doc­u­men­tary,” he says. “It’s notion­al­ly a day in the life of a city in the Sovi­et Union and so it has, on a pure­ly sociological/historical lev­el, great val­ue. But what it does beyond that is to show you the means of pro­duc­tion: the film­ing, the cut­ting room, the edit­ing – all the things that are going into the mak­ing of this film.”

You can, of course, watch Man with a Movie Cam­era free at the top of this post. For the oth­er 49 Doc­u­men­taries You Need to See, you may have to do some more search­ing, but they’ll repay the effort many times over with their intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion, their unex­pect­ed dra­ma, and their explo­ration of the bor­der­lands between cin­e­mat­ic fic­tion and cin­e­mat­ic fact. Few films of any kind per­form that last mis­sion as astute­ly as Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-up (avail­able on Hulu if you start a free tri­al), about a man’s imper­son­ation of famous Iran­ian film­mak­er Mohsen Makhmal­baf, re-enact­ed with the very same peo­ple orig­i­nal­ly involved: the impos­tor, the fam­i­ly he tried to trick, the judge who presided over the ensu­ing tri­al, and even Makhmal­baf him­self.

Close-up (as well as one of Makhmal­baf’s own movies, Salaam Cin­e­ma) appears among the picks from Joshua Oppen­heimer, a doc­u­men­tar­i­an spe­cial­iz­ing in exam­i­na­tions of mas­sacres in Indone­sia. When you’ve watched all the rec­om­men­da­tions, you might con­sid­er cir­cling back and check­ing out Oppen­heimer’s The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence. By the same token, after you’ve seen Agnès Var­da’s The Glean­ers and I, have a look at Lucy Walk­er’s Waste Land; after Wern­er Her­zog’s Griz­zly Man, Kha­lo Mata­bane’s Sto­ry of a Beau­ti­ful Coun­try. But fair warn­ing before you launch into this view­ing project: once you come out of it, you won’t see the pos­si­bil­i­ties of cin­e­ma in quite the same way ever again — at the very least, you’ll see infi­nite­ly more of them.

For anoth­er list, see The 10 Great­est Doc­u­men­taries of All Time Accord­ing to 340 Film­mak­ers and Crit­ics.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

265 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

Free: Dzi­ga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, the 8th Best Film Ever Made

Wern­er Her­zog Nar­rates the Touch­ing, Exis­ten­tial Jour­ney of a Plas­tic Bag

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

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Watch City Out of Time, A Short Tribute to Venice, Narrated by William Shatner in 1959

in Film | March 30th, 2016

Last month, Cana­da lost one of its impor­tant film­mak­ers, Col­in Low. Over a career span­ning six decades, Low worked on over 200 pro­duc­tions at the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da. He won count­less awards, includ­ing two Short Film Palme d’Or awards at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. His work inspired oth­er soon-to-be-influ­en­tial film­mak­ers, like Ken Burns and Stan­ley Kubrick. And he helped pio­neer the giant-screen IMAX for­mat.

Above you can watch City Out of Time, Low’s short trib­ute to Venice. The 1959 film, writes the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da, “depicts Venice in all its splen­dor. In the tra­di­tion of Venet­ian painter Canalet­to, the film cap­tures the great Ital­ian city’s elu­sive beau­ty and fabled land­scapes, where spired church­es and tur­ret­ed palaces soar into a blue Mediter­ranean sky.” The film also fea­tures a nar­ra­tion by a young William Shat­ner, then only 28 years old, whose voice sounds noth­ing like the one we’d hear sev­er­al years lat­er in Star Trek, nev­er mind those unfor­get­table spo­ken-word albums he start­ed releas­ing in the late 1960s.

City Out of Time will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

The sec­ond film on the page is Low’s 1952 ani­ma­tion, The Romance of Trans­porta­tion in Cana­da, which won a Short Film Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Shat­ner Nar­rates Space Shut­tle Doc­u­men­tary

Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da Launch­es Free iPad App

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Venice (Its Streets, Plazas & Canals) with Google Street View

A Short His­to­ry of the Venice Bien­nale, the World’s Most Impor­tant Art Exhi­bi­tion

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Glass: The Oscar-Winning “Perfect Short Documentary” on Dutch Glassmaking (1958)

in Film | March 29th, 2016

You’ll find many a bold claim on Wikipedia, even on the page for Bert Haanstra’s Glass, a 1958 short doc­u­men­tary on glass­mak­ing in the Nether­lands, which, as of this writ­ing, men­tions that the film “is often acclaimed to be the per­fect short doc­u­men­tary.” Just the sort of thing you’d want to take with a grain of salt, right? But if you watch Glass itself, which won the 1959 Acad­e­my Award for Doc­u­men­tary Short Sub­ject, you might find your­self join­ing in on that sup­posed cho­rus of acclaim.

Prashant Par­vat­neni at The Essen­tial Mys­tery calls Glass “at once a pas­sion­ate cel­e­bra­tion of human labour and crafts­man­ship and a bit­ing cri­tique of the mech­a­nis­tic mass-pro­duc­tion of objects. On the very sur­face this doc­u­men­tary can appear as a demon­stra­tive film keen­ly elu­ci­dat­ing the very basic process­es that go into the mak­ing of hand­made glass­ware and jux­ta­pos­ing it with the process of bot­tle-mak­ing in a mech­a­nised fac­to­ry.

Yet this very jux­ta­po­si­tion cou­pled with a Haanstra’s strong styl­is­tic inter­ven­tion takes the film into a polem­i­cal space.” Tak­ing a slight­ly dif­fer­ent tone, Colos­sal’s Christo­pher Job­son high­lights the jazz of the tra­di­tion­al half, and the “whim­si­cal score of more syn­the­sized music” in the mod­ern half. “Also,” he adds, “there’s a ton of great smok­ing!”

Job­son does­n’t men­tion that these guys also some­how man­age to keep smok­ing even while blow­ing glass — an impres­sive feat indeed, and just one of the impres­sive qual­i­ties on dis­play in Glass’ brief run­time. Even­tu­al­ly, the footage turns back from the fac­to­ry to the work­shop, and soon it begins oscil­lat­ing between the two, cut­ting to the jazzy rhythm and even mak­ing the machines and work­men into musi­cal instru­ments of a kind. The Dutch glass­mak­ing indus­try has sure­ly changed in the past half-cen­tu­ry, but stu­dents of Dutch film can’t ignore the work of Haanstra, who in addi­tion to this and oth­er doc­u­men­taries short and long, direct­ed fea­tures includ­ing Fan­fare, still one of the most pop­u­lar films in the Nether­lands ever. But as any film his­to­ri­an might sus­pect — and here comes anoth­er bold claim — Glass will out­live them all.

Glass will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Man Cre­ates: Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Look at Cre­ativ­i­ty (1968)

Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short, The Dot and the Line, Cel­e­brates Geom­e­try and Hard Work (1965)

Watch the Funky, Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Music of Herb Alpert & the Tijua­na Brass (1966)

36 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web

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

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Watch the Earliest Surviving Filmed Version of The Wizard of Oz (1910)

in Books, Film | March 28th, 2016

The Tech­ni­col­or Oz that greet­ed Judy Gar­land in 1939 seems a far less col­or­ful place than the one in 1910’s silent short, The Won­der­ful Wiz­ard of Oz, above. (A ver­sion with music added can be found below.)

Adapt­ed in part from a 1902 stage ver­sion, this Wiz­ard — the ear­li­est to sur­vive on film — feels quite close to the spir­it of author L. Frank Baum and illus­tra­tor William Wal­lace Denslow’s orig­i­nal cre­ation.

Audi­ence mem­bers who had no famil­iar­i­ty with the source mate­r­i­al must’ve been very, very con­fused. There’s a lot of bang for the buck, but title cards aside, not much in the way of con­text.

No mat­ter. There are plen­ty of spe­cial effects and a crowd-pleas­ing cho­rus of gra­tu­itous beau­ties in tights and bloomers, just as in Georges Méliès’ sem­i­nal A Trip to the Moon.

It’s con­ceiv­able that Jack Haley and Burt Lahr, the MGM version’s Tin Woods­man and Cow­ard­ly Lion, might have been tak­en to see the 13 minute short as chil­dren. (Scare­crow Ray Bol­ger was a mere babe at the time of its release.)

Despite the pres­ence of all the well-known char­ac­ters, includ­ing two Totos, for my mon­ey, the project’s true star is Hank, the scene steal­ing mule.

I think the actor in the mule suit like­ly agreed, though Hank’s role in the Oz pan­theon is minor at best.

It’s unclear to me if the Wizard’s dark make­up is meant to be black­face. Accord­ing to Robin Bernstein’s Racial Inno­cence: Per­form­ing Amer­i­can Child­hood from Slav­ery to Civ­il Rights, the stage play that inspired the film fea­tured min­strel songs and pop­u­lar black­face actors Fred A. Stone and David Mont­gomery as the Scare­crow and Tin Woods­man.

The film cast’s iden­ti­ties have been lost to his­to­ry, though a rumor per­sists that the young actress play­ing Dorothy is fre­quent Harold Lloyd co-star, Bebe Daniels. The orig­i­nal piano score is unknown, but like­ly hewed close­ly to Paul Tiet­jens’ music from the play, which is what we hear in the online ver­sion.

Five years lat­er, the movies returned to Oz, with the Baum-pro­duced and ‑script­ed fea­tures, The Patch­work Girl of Oz, His Majesty, the Scare­crow of Oz, and The Mag­ic Cloak of Oz.

The Wiz­ard of Oz (1910) will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

You can also down­load the com­plete Wiz­ard of Oz Series, as free eBooks and free audio books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

A Trip to the Moon (1902): Where Sci Fi Movies Began

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She was shocked to find out how much her child­hood Oz books are worth, but has thus far resist­ed part­ing with them. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Quentin Tarantino Picks the 12 Best Films of All Time; Watch Two of His Favorites Free Online

in Film | March 24th, 2016

Every decade, when the British Film Insti­tute (BFI) announces the out­come of its Sight & Sound Poll of the Great­est Films of All Time, cinephiles lis­ten; no less a seri­ous movie per­son than Roger Ebert called it, among the count­less polls of great movies, “the only one most seri­ous movie peo­ple take seri­ous­ly.” When the BFI con­ducts the poll, it divides those polled into two groups: one for crit­ics like Ebert, and one for direc­tors like, say, Quentin Taran­ti­no, whose thor­ough knowl­edge of cin­e­ma and absolute seri­ous­ness as a movie per­son almost makes him a crit­ic as well, albeit one who does his crit­i­cism in the form of movies.

In the 2002 poll, Taran­ti­no named these as the great­est films of all time:

You can watch two of Taran­ti­no’s 2002 picks, the for­mal­ly exper­i­men­tal caper com­e­dy Hi Did­dle Did­dle as well as His Girl Fri­day, the cap­stone of the screw­ball com­e­dy sub­genre, for free online. Once you’ve enjoyed the both of them, why not have a look at Taran­ti­no’s selec­tions a decade on, for the 2012 Sight & Sound direc­tors poll, to com­pare and con­trast, with the new titles bold­ed:

Taran­ti­no’s 2012 selec­tions reveal a clear increase in appre­ci­a­tion, or at least will­ing­ness to vote his appre­ci­a­tion, for high-pro­file pic­tures of the 1970s — Apoc­a­lypse Now, Jaws, Taxi Dri­ver, The Bad News Bears — a decade whose cin­e­ma to which the direc­tor has made no lack of homage. We’ll have to wait six more years, until the 2022 poll, to get a full sense of how Taran­ti­no’s idea of the canon has changed. Will the grim, satir­i­cal, and lurid films of the 70s con­sume most of his list by then? Will he favor a dif­fer­ent era of film his­to­ry entire­ly? I’d only put mon­ey on one thing for sure about the pref­er­ence of this film­mak­er who loves dia­logue even more than vio­lence: His Girl Fri­day isn’t going any­where.

You can find His Girl Fri­day and Hi Did­dle Did­dle on our list, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Tarantino’s 10 Favorite Films of 2013

Quentin Tarantino’s Top 20 Grindhouse/Exploitation Flicks: Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Hal­loween & More

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His 20 Favorite Spaghet­ti West­erns, Start­ing with The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Tarantino’s Hand­writ­ten List of the 11 “Great­est Movies”

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Films Since 1992

Watch His Girl Fri­day, Howard Hawks’ Clas­sic Screw­ball Com­e­dy Star­ring Cary Grant, Free Online

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

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Actors from The Wire Star in a Short Film Adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s “The Gilded Six-Bits” (2001)

in Film, Literature | March 22nd, 2016

After the cult suc­cess of HBO’s grit­ty Bal­ti­more crime dra­ma, The Wire, the obses­sive­ness of the show’s fan­base became a run­ning joke. Devot­ed Wire-lovers brow­beat friends, fam­i­ly, and cowork­ers with the show’s many virtues. Wire fans became emo­tion­al­ly attached not only to the show’s char­ac­ters, but also to the actors who played them. Though I man­aged to shun Wire evan­ge­lists for a time, I too final­ly became a con­vert after its six-year run end­ed in 2008. Like many a fan I was thrilled to see actors Michael K. Williams and Michael B. Jor­dan land juicy post-Wire roles (and sad­dened to see some of the show’s oth­er fine actors seem to dis­ap­pear from view).

And, like many a fan, I also want­ed to know these actors’ back­sto­ries. What had they been up to before The Wire? We get one answer to that ques­tion above, in the adap­ta­tion of Zora Neale Hurston’s 1933 short sto­ry “The Gild­ed Six-Bits.” In the star­ring role, you’ll rec­og­nize The Wire’s (even­tu­al­ly) reformed ex-con Den­nis “Cut­ty” Wise, or Chad Cole­man, in his first star­ring role. Play­ing oppo­site him you’ll be hap­py to see your favorite wiseass, phi­lan­der­ing, cig­ar-chomp­ing detec­tive, Bunk More­land, or Wen­dell Pierce, who has land­ed many juicy roles of his own, both pre- and post-Wire. (Here, play­ing a wiseass, cig­ar-chomp­ing wom­an­iz­er.) Adapt­ed and direct­ed by author and film­mak­er Book­er T. Mat­ti­son, the short film debuted on Show­time in 2001.

The sto­ry is an ear­ly exam­ple of Hurston’s genius, writ­ten four years before the pub­li­ca­tion of her break­out nov­el Their Eyes Were Watch­ing God and two years before her ground­break­ing study of African-Amer­i­can folk­lore, Mules and Men. Pub­lished in the influ­en­tial lit­er­ary mag­a­zine Sto­ry—which also served as an impor­tant venue for writ­ers like J.D. Salinger and Richard Wright—“The Gild­ed Six-Bits” so impressed the magazine’s edi­tor that he asked Hurston if she had a nov­el in progress. She didn’t, but told him she did, and imme­di­ate­ly began work on Jonah’s Gourd Vine, pub­lished the fol­low­ing year. A sto­ry of infi­deli­ty and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, “The Gild­ed Six-Bits” fea­tures char­ac­ters and a set­ting famil­iar to Hurston readers—ordinary African-Amer­i­cans caught up in the tra­vails of rur­al life in the Jim Crow South. But as in all of her work, the seem­ing sim­plic­i­ty of her char­ac­ters and lan­guage slow­ly reveal com­pli­cat­ed truths about the nature of lan­guage, mar­riage, sex­u­al­i­ty, and mon­ey. And few could bring her char­ac­ters to life bet­ter than your favorite Wire actors.

Find more films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Zora Neale Hurston Sing the Bawdy Prison Blues Song “Uncle Bud” (1940)

Hear Zora Neale Hurston Sing Tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can Folk Song “Mule on the Mount” (1939)

An Art­ful, Ani­mat­ed Trib­ute to The Wire, Cre­at­ed by a Fan of the Crit­i­cal­ly-Acclaimed TV Series

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

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