Donald Deconstructs Citizen Kane

in Business, Film | September 9th, 2015

If there is any con­tem­po­rary fig­ure out there that resem­bles Charles Fos­ter Kane, it is that real estate mogul and unlike­ly GOP front run­ner, Don­ald Trump. Like Kane, Trump was edu­cat­ed in, and thrown out of, some of the most elite pri­vate schools out there. Both have huge, larg­er-than-life per­son­al­i­ties that read­i­ly turned them into media icons. Both had tumul­tuous rela­tion­ships with women that end­ed up tabloid fod­der. Both osten­ta­tious­ly flaunt­ed their wealth. And both have grandiose polit­i­cal ambi­tions.

Above you can watch The Don­ald expound on Orson Welles’s mas­ter­piece in a clip direct­ed by none oth­er than mas­ter doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris. Trump is remark­ably thought­ful in this piece com­pared to the cam­paign trail where he often sounds like a WWE bark­er chan­nel­ing Mus­soli­ni. He comes to the movie from a van­tage point that most of us just don’t have; name­ly, he knows what it’s like being obscene­ly wealthy.

Cit­i­zen Kane is real­ly about accu­mu­la­tion. And at the end of the accu­mu­la­tion, you see what hap­pens. And it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly all pos­i­tive. I think you learn in Kane that maybe wealth isn’t every­thing. He had the wealth; he just didn’t have the hap­pi­ness. The table get­ting larg­er and larg­er and larg­er with he and his wife get­ting fur­ther and fur­ther apart as he got wealth­i­er and wealth­i­er, per­haps I can under­stand that…. Wealth iso­lates you from oth­er peo­ple.

At the end of the piece, Mor­ris asks Trump to give Kane some advice. His response, deliv­ered with a smirk, is pure Trump – i.e. bom­bas­tic and misog­y­nist. “Get your­self a dif­fer­ent woman.”

The seg­ment comes from an abort­ed project by Mor­ris called Movie Movie, where he envi­sioned putting mod­ern fig­ures into the films they most admire. So imag­ine Trump actu­al­ly in a re-enact­ment of Kane. Or, as also almost hap­pened, imag­ine Mikhail Gor­bachev star­ring in a reen­act­ment of Dr. Strangelove. It’s a damned shame that Movie Movie nev­er got made.

Below you can see more of Trump along with Gor­bachev, Lou Reed, Wal­ter Cronkite and oth­ers talk­ing about their favorite movies in a video made for the 2002 Acad­e­my Awards.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Orson Welles’ Clas­sic Radio Per­for­mance of 10 Shake­speare Plays

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

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 lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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The First Animated Feature Film: The Adventures of Prince Achmed by Lotte Reiniger (1926)

in Animation, Film | September 4th, 2015


Ear­li­er this week, we fea­tured pio­neer­ing Ger­man ani­ma­tor Lotte Reiniger’s ani­mat­ed sil­hou­ette films, for which she adapt­ed old Euro­pean sto­ries like “Cin­derel­la,” “Thum­be­li­na,” and “Hansel and Gre­tel” into a strik­ing visu­al style — strik­ing now, and even more strik­ing in the 1920s — sim­i­lar to tra­di­tion­al Indone­sian shad­ow pup­pet the­ater. Her work draws plen­ty of mate­r­i­al from folk­tales, but not just those from in and around her home­land (Ger­many). For her most ambi­tious work, for instance, Reiniger looked all the way to Ara­bia, adapt­ing sto­ries from no less ven­er­a­ble a source than One Thou­sand and One Nights. The 65-minute result, 1926’s The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed, stands as the ear­li­est ani­mat­ed fea­ture film. (See a nice clip above. The com­plete film lives on DVD/Blu Ray.)

“For cen­turies Prince Achmed on his mag­ic horse had lived a com­fort­able life as a well-loved fairy tale fig­ure of the Ara­bi­an nights and was well con­tent­ed with that,” Reiniger writes in her intro­duc­tion to the pic­ture. “But one day he was thrown out of his peace­ful exis­tence by a film com­pa­ny which want­ed to employ him and many oth­er char­ac­ters of the same sto­ries for an ani­mat­ed film.” And so, in 1923, it fell to her and a select group of col­lab­o­ra­tors to make that film. They labored for the bet­ter part of three years, not just because of the require­ments of shoot­ing each and every frame by hand but because of the exper­i­men­tal nature of ani­ma­tion itself. “We had to exper­i­ment and try out all sorts of inven­tions to make the sto­ry come alive. The more the shoot­ing of Prince Achmed advanced the more ambi­tious he became.”

At that time, The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed did not, of course, even faint­ly resem­ble any fea­ture yet made. “No the­atre dared show it,” Reiniger writes, “for ‘it was not done.’ ” And so they did it them­selves, screen­ing the film just out­side Berlin, which led to a show in Paris, then one in Berlin prop­er, by which point Prince Achmed and his mag­ic horse were well on their way to a place in the ani­ma­tion his­to­ry books. They near­ly lost that place due to the 1945 bat­tle of Berlin, when the film’s neg­a­tive was lost amid the destruc­tion, but the British Film Insti­tute had made a neg­a­tive of their own for a Lon­don screen­ing, which even­tu­al­ly became the mate­r­i­al for a restora­tion and revival. “The revival was done by the son of the banker who spon­sored the film in 1923,” notes Reiniger. “He had assist­ed in its cre­ation as a small boy. So it was grant­ed to old Prince Achmed to have a hap­py res­ur­rec­tion after almost half a cen­tu­ry” — and he con­tin­ues to win new fans today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

Sita Sings the Blues Now on YouTube

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917–1931)

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Woody Allen Tells a Classic Joke About Hemingway, Fitzgerald & Gertrude Stein in 1965: A Precursor to Midnight in Paris

in Comedy, Film | September 3rd, 2015

The char­ac­ter we know as “Woody Allen,” the per­sona we see in his films, the stam­mer­ing neu­rot­ic weighed down by exis­ten­tial angst and a des­per­ate horni­ness laced with intel­lec­tu­al­i­ty, was cre­at­ed not in his movies, but in his stand-up, record­ings of which have been in and out of cir­cu­la­tion since 1964. (They’re now avail­able here.)

The direc­tor is report­ed­ly even more embar­rassed of these record­ings than his films–and any­one who has seen his sit-down with crit­ic Mark Cousins can attest, he can’t even stand to watch his films–but maybe that’s about the per­for­mance itself, and not the mate­r­i­al.

I say that because in the clip above, a rou­tine that Allen loved enough that he often used it to end his sets in the 60s, we can see the nascent idea for his Oscar-win­ning 2011 film Mid­night in Paris.

Riff­ing on The Lost Gen­er­a­tion, he imag­ines him­self back in time, carous­ing with Hem­ing­way, Gertrude Stein, Picas­so, F. Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald, and famed Span­ish bull­fight­er Manolete. It’s a one-two-three-and punch­line joke we won’t ruin, but it’s inter­est­ing that con­scious­ly or sub­con­scious­ly, this idea returned some five decades lat­er to be fleshed out into one of Allen’s best late-peri­od films. Was he always think­ing of this rou­tine as a some­day film? In inter­views from the time of the film’s release, he nev­er men­tions the stand-up bit.

Cre­at­ing art is often like com­post­ing, and one nev­er knows what might float to the top after years of influ­ences and absorp­tion. Lis­ten­ing to his stand-up, one can find the joke that he recy­cled for Annie Hall (“I was thrown out of NYU my fresh­man year, I cheat­ed on my meta­physics final in col­lege, I looked with­in the soul of the boy sit­ting next to me.”).

There’s also this rou­tine about a scary sub­way ride:

The scene was lat­er recre­at­ed in Bananas with a young Sylvester Stal­lone.

Allen’s pre-film career, when he was writ­ing for tele­vi­sion and his own stand-up, when his goals were to “write for Bob Hope and host the Oscars” makes for fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing, and we’ll leave you with this his­to­ry from WMFU. Nerdist has more thoughts on the rela­tion­ship between The Lost Gen­er­a­tion joke and Mid­night in Paris here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Woody Allen’s Type­writer, Scis­sors and Sta­pler: The Great Film­mak­er Shows Us How He Writes

Watch an Exu­ber­ant, Young Woody Allen Do Live Stand Up on British TV (1965)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Hayao Miyazaki’s Masterpieces Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke Imagined as 8‑Bit Video Games

in Animation, Film, Video Games | September 3rd, 2015

As an unapolo­getic mem­ber of the “Mil­len­ni­al” gen­er­a­tion, allow me to tell you how to win over a great many of us at a stroke: just appeal to our long-instilled affin­i­ty for Japan­ese ani­ma­tion and clas­sic video games. Raised, like many of my peers born in the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s, on a steady diet of those art forms — not that every­one knew to acknowl­edge them as art forms back then — I respond instinc­tive­ly to either of them, and as for their inter­sec­tion, well, how could I resist?

I cer­tain­ly can’t resist the ster­ling exam­ple of ani­me-meets-ret­rogam­ing in action just above: an 8‑Bit Cin­e­ma dou­ble-fea­ture, offer­ing David and Hen­ry Dut­ton’s pix­e­lat­ed ren­di­tions of huge­ly respect­ed Japan­ese ani­ma­tion mas­ter Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s films Spir­it­ed Away and Princess Mononoke. In just under eight min­utes, the video tells both sto­ries — the for­mer of a young girl trans­port­ed into not just the spir­it realm but into employ­ment at one of its bath­hous­es; the lat­ter of the unend­ing strug­gle between humans and for­est gods in 15th-cen­tu­ry Japan — as tra­di­tion­al side-scrolling, plat­form-jump­ing video games.

Clear­ly labors of love by true clas­sic gamers, these trans­for­ma­tions get not just the graph­ics (which actu­al­ly look bet­ter than real games of the era, in keep­ing with Miyaza­k­i’s artistry) but the sound, music, and even game­play con­ven­tions just right. I’d love to play real ver­sions of these games, espe­cial­ly since, apart from an unloved adap­ta­tion of Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, Miyaza­k­i’s movies haven’t plunged into the video-game realm.

And if you respond bet­ter to the aes­thet­ic of clas­sic gam­ing than to that of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, do have a look at 8‑Bit Cin­e­ma’s oth­er work, much of which you can sam­ple in their show reel with clips from their ver­sions of pic­tures like The Shin­ing, Kill Bill, and The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou. I remem­ber many child­hood con­ver­sa­tions about how video games would even­tu­al­ly look just like our favorite movies, ani­mat­ed or oth­er­wise; lit­tle did we know that, one day, our favorite movies would also look just like video games.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Uni­verse Recre­at­ed in a Won­der­ful CGI Trib­ute

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

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

The Delight­ful TV Ads Direct­ed by Hayao Miyaza­ki & Oth­er Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Ani­ma­tors (1992–2015)

The Phi­los­o­phy of Friedrich Niet­zsche Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games

8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy: Pla­to, Sartre, Der­ri­da & Oth­er Thinkers Explained With Vin­tage Video Games

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

The Great Gats­by and Wait­ing for Godot: The Video Game Edi­tions

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Films of Quentin Tarantino: Watch Video Essays on Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill & More

in Film | September 1st, 2015

In the ten years between Reser­voir Dogs (1992) and Kill Bill (2003), Quentin Taran­ti­no was all some film fans could talk about, and who many up-and-com­ing direc­tors idol­ized and copied. But it would take anoth­er ten years for his films to be intel­li­gent­ly dis­cussed, and it’s a sign of these times that the best essays are not in print but in video for­mat.

Matt Zoller Seitz and his col­leagues over at Indiewire’s Press Play blog led the charge with a series of 10 ‑12 minute video essays (col­lec­tive­ly called “On the Q.T.”) that explore indi­vid­ual Taran­ti­no films and his approach to film­mak­ing.

The video above is part two of the series and probes what it means to be cool in Pulp Fic­tion, how char­ac­ters cre­ate their own mytholo­gies and what hap­pens when real­i­ty con­fronts them.

If that video makes you look at Pulp Fic­tion in a deep­er way, then you’ll enjoy the first in the series, on Reser­voir Dogs. Seitz claims the film is both a col­lage of film quotes and ref­er­ences, from City on Fire to The Killing, but there’s a human heart beat­ing beneath all of it. And that’s a les­son lost on all the imi­ta­tors that came in Tarantino’s ‘90s wake, he says.

You might also want to check out this two part essay (Part 1 — Part 2) on Jack­ie Brown – this one craft­ed by Press Play’s Odie Henderson–which exam­ines what Taran­ti­no took from Elmore Leonard in his only adap­ta­tion to date, and what is pure QT. (Hint: It’s the cast­ing of Pam Gri­er).

The final video in the series looks at the Female Arche­type vs. the God­dess in Kill Bill. Cre­at­ed by Nel­son Car­va­jal, who uses cap­tions instead of nar­ra­tion, it’s the weak­est in the series, being long on clips and short on ideas.

But with The Hate­ful Eight on the hori­zon, the entire series will get you ready for inter­pret­ing the lat­est in his oeu­vre.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Quentin Taran­ti­no Super­cuts Explore the Director’s Styl­ized Use of Sound, Close Ups & Cars in His Films

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Clever Promo for Ridley Scott’s New Sci-Fi Film, The Martian

in Astronomy, Film | August 31st, 2015

“Ever since our species first looked up at the sky, we dreamed of reach­ing Mars. Back in 2029, that dream became real, when the first humans stepped foot on the Red plan­et. And, in a few months, a new group of astro­nauts will make the jour­ney.…”

It all seems like many oth­er Neil deGrasse Tyson videos you’ve seen before. Until he says, “Back in 2029.” Wait, what?

Behold Neil deGrasse Tyson appear­ing in a clever pro­mo for Rid­ley Scot­t’s upcom­ing film The Mar­t­ian. 

Based on Andy Weir’s best­selling 2011 nov­el The Mar­t­ian, the movie will star Matt Damon as Mark Wat­ney, an astro­naut who goes on a big mis­sion to Mars — the one so stir­ring­ly described by Tyson above. But the jour­ney to Mars is not where the real action hap­pens, and we’ll just leave it at that. No spoil­ers here.

The film will hit the­aters in Octo­ber. You can watch an offi­cial trail­er here. And, in the mean­time, you can always lis­ten to Neil’s Star Talk Radio Show (ref­er­enced in the clip) any­time.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Shat­ner Nar­rates Space Shut­tle Doc­u­men­tary

Astro­naut Reads The Divine Com­e­dy on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion on Dante’s 750th Birth­day

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

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The Evolution of Batman in Cinema: From 1939 to Present

in Comics/Cartoons, Film | August 27th, 2015

Bob Kane cre­at­ed Bat­man in 1939 as a way to ful­fill the public’s need for more com­ic book super­heroes in the wake of Super­man. And, by 1943, Bat­man made his way from pulpy print to the screen for first time.

In this video trib­ute to the many looks of Bat­man through the ages, Jacob T. Swin­ney advances chrono­log­i­cal­ly, but also the­mat­i­cal­ly, focus­ing on the inter­play between Bat­man and his side­kick Robin; the fetishiza­tion of Batman’s tool belt; and the evo­lu­tion of his cos­tume from fab­ric (his clas­sic look up through the ’80s) to the BDSM-inspired rub­ber out­fits that have last­ed since Michael Keaton donned the sol­id black get-up through Chris­t­ian Bale’s inter­pre­ta­tion. (It does seem that Ben Affleck’s ver­sion will not devi­ate from this course, but add some armor. He will also con­tin­ue to perch on top of spires and tall build­ings and stand watch over the city.)

The oth­er evo­lu­tion worth notic­ing is in Batman’s voice, and what it says about America’s rela­tion­ship with author­i­ty. In the ear­ly seri­als up through Adam West’s icon­ic TV ver­sion, Bat­man speaks in clipped but enun­ci­at­ed tones, some­where in the region of news­cast­ers and G‑men. This con­nects Bat­man to the detec­tive part of his char­ac­ter and telegraphs his innate good­ness. But once Keaton takes on the role, Bat­man speaks in a low, grave­ly tone to suit his vig­i­lante ethos, designed for meet­ings in dark alleys. This is how we want our heroes now.

This “seri­ous” shift takes its cue from Frank Miller’s ground­break­ing The Dark Knight Returns com­ic book, which is ground zero for every super­hero film since that wears its grit­ty real­ism on its sleeve. This affect­ed speech reach­es its fair­ly ridicu­lous apoth­e­o­sis in Christo­pher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Ris­es, where both hero and vil­lain are incom­pre­hen­si­ble. The only thing left is par­o­dy, and that’s how we end this video, with Will Arnett’s voice ani­mat­ing the Lego Movie’s ver­sion of the super­hero: affect­ed, nar­cis­sis­tic, and believ­ing too much in his own myth.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bat­man Stars in an Unusu­al Car­toon Adap­ta­tion of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment

Slavoj Žižek’s Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy Decodes The Dark Knight and They Live

The Dark Knight: Anato­my of a Flawed Action Scene

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Marilyn Monroe Recounts Her Harrowing Experience in a Psychiatric Ward in a 1961 Letter

in Film, Letters | August 26th, 2015

Marilyn_Monroe_in_The_Misfits_trailer_2

By the end of 1960, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe was com­ing apart.

She spent much of that year shoot­ing what would be her final com­plet­ed movie – The Mis­fits (see a still from the trail­er above). Arthur Miller penned the film, which is about a beau­ti­ful, frag­ile woman who falls in love with a much old­er man. The script was pret­ty clear­ly based on his own trou­bled mar­riage with Mon­roe. The pro­duc­tion was by all accounts spec­tac­u­lar­ly pun­ish­ing. Shot in the deserts of Neva­da, the tem­per­a­ture on set would reg­u­lar­ly climb north of 100 degrees. Direc­tor John Hus­ton spent much of the shoot rag­ing­ly drunk. Star Clark Gable dropped dead from a heart attack less than a week after pro­duc­tion wrapped. And Mon­roe watched as her hus­band, who was on set, fell in love with pho­tog­ra­ph­er Inge Morath. Nev­er one blessed with con­fi­dence or a thick skin, Mon­roe retreat­ed into a daze of pre­scrip­tion drugs. Mon­roe and Miller announced their divorce on Novem­ber 11, 1960.

A few months lat­er, the emo­tion­al­ly exhaust­ed movie star was com­mit­ted by her psy­cho­an­a­lyst Dr. Mar­i­anne Kris to the Payne Whit­ney Psy­chi­atric Clin­ic in New York. Mon­roe thought she was going in for a rest cure. Instead, she was escort­ed to a padded cell. The four days she spent in the psych ward proved to be among the most dis­tress­ing of her life.

In a riv­et­ing 6‑page let­ter to her oth­er shrink, Dr. Ralph Green­son, writ­ten soon after her release, she detailed her ter­ri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence.

There was no empa­thy at Payne-Whit­ney — it had a very bad effect — they asked me after putting me in a “cell” (I mean cement blocks and all) for very dis­turbed depressed patients (except I felt I was in some kind of prison for a crime I had­n’t com­mit­ted. The inhu­man­i­ty there I found archa­ic. They asked me why I was­n’t hap­py there (every­thing was under lock and key; things like elec­tric lights, dress­er draw­ers, bath­rooms, clos­ets, bars con­cealed on the win­dows — the doors have win­dows so patients can be vis­i­ble all the time, also, the vio­lence and mark­ings still remain on the walls from for­mer patients). I answered: “Well, I’d have to be nuts if I like it here.”

Mon­roe quick­ly became des­per­ate.

I sat on the bed try­ing to fig­ure if I was giv­en this sit­u­a­tion in an act­ing impro­vi­sa­tion what would I do. So I fig­ured, it’s a squeaky wheel that gets the grease. I admit it was a loud squeak but I got the idea from a movie I made once called “Don’t Both­er to Knock”. I picked up a light-weight chair and slammed it, and it was hard to do because I had nev­er bro­ken any­thing in my life — against the glass inten­tion­al­ly. It took a lot of bang­ing to get even a small piece of glass — so I went over with the glass con­cealed in my hand and sat qui­et­ly on the bed wait­ing for them to come in. They did, and I said to them “If you are going to treat me like a nut I’ll act like a nut”. I admit the next thing is corny but I real­ly did it in the movie except it was with a razor blade. I indi­cat­ed if they did­n’t let me out I would harm myself — the fur­thest thing from my mind at that moment since you know Dr. Green­son I’m an actress and would nev­er inten­tion­al­ly mark or mar myself. I’m just that vain.

Dur­ing her four days there, she was sub­ject­ed to forced baths and a com­plete loss of pri­va­cy and per­son­al free­dom. The more she sobbed and resist­ed, the more the doc­tors there thought she might actu­al­ly be psy­chot­ic. Monroe’s sec­ond hus­band, Joe DiMag­gio, res­cued her by get­ting her released ear­ly, over the objec­tions of the staff.

You can read the full let­ter (where she also talks about read­ing the let­ters of Sig­mund Freud) over at Let­ters of Note. And while there, make sure you pick up a copy of the very ele­gant Let­ters of Note book.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Play­ground (1955)

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1952)

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Explains Rel­a­tiv­i­ty to Albert Ein­stein (in a Nico­las Roeg Movie)

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 lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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