Martin Scorsese Creates a List of 39 Essential Foreign Films for a Young Filmmaker

in Film | October 15th, 2014

MARTIN-SCORSESE-MOVIE-LIST

Eight or so years ago, young film­mak­er Col­in Levy got an oppor­tu­ni­ty of a life­time. He got a one-on-one meet­ing with Mar­tin Scors­ese. After spend­ing much of his time in high school mak­ing a five-minute short, Levy won the nation­al Youn­gArts award — and, with it, the chance to chat with the guy who direct­ed Good­fel­las, Taxi Dri­ver and Rag­ing Bull.

After get­ting a per­son­al tour of Scorsese’s office and edit­ing bays by none oth­er than leg­endary edi­tor Thel­ma Schoon­mak­er, Levy met the man him­self. “It was a defin­ing moment in my path as a film­mak­er,” he lat­er wrote on his blog.

Mar­tin Scors­ese was intim­i­dat­ing, to say the least. But very jovial, very talk­a­tive, and he took me seri­ous­ly. (Or con­vinced me, at least.) I pret­ty much kept my mouth shut. Every 30 sec­onds he would men­tion an actor, pro­duc­er, direc­tor or film title I had nev­er heard of before. I was stunned just to be in his pres­ence. He liked my film, he said. “How did you do the lit­tle crea­tures?” I tried to explain how I fig­ured out the basics of 3D ani­ma­tion. His eyes lit up and he start­ed talk­ing about the dig­i­tal effects in The Avi­a­tor.

The jux­ta­po­si­tion of scales was over­pow­er­ing. I felt like I was in a movie. Why he spent so much time with me I do not know, but it was amaz­ing just to be in his pres­ence. A few weeks after­wards I labored over a thank-you card, in which I expressed the over­whelm­ing impres­sion I had got­ten that I don’t know enough about any­thing. I spe­cial­ly don’t know enough about film his­to­ry and for­eign cin­e­ma. I asked if he had any sug­ges­tions for where to start.

A cou­ple weeks lat­er, Scorsese’s assis­tant sent him a hand­ful of books and 39 for­eign movies per­son­al­ly picked by the film­mak­er. “Mr. Scors­ese asked that I send this your way,” his assis­tant wrote to Col­in. “This should be a jump start to your film edu­ca­tion!”

Scorsese’s selec­tions – which you can see above – are a fas­ci­nat­ing insight into what influ­enced the film­mak­er. Sev­er­al movies are peren­ni­al film school clas­sics: Ital­ian neo­re­al­ist mas­ter­pieces like the Bicy­cle Thief and Umber­to D pop up on the list along with ground­break­ing French New Wave works like 400 Blows and Breath­less. More unex­pect­ed is sur­pris­ing­ly strong show­ings of both Japan­ese post-war movies and New Ger­man cin­e­ma. Both Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder get three films each. And while there are some rather eccen­tric, unex­pect­ed inclu­sions in the list–Roc­co and his Broth­ers? Il Sor­pas­so? Death by Hang­ing? – there are also some pret­ty strik­ing omis­sions; big name art house fig­ures like Ing­mar Bergman, Robert Bres­son and most sur­pris­ing­ly Fed­eri­co Felli­ni didn’t make the cut. In any case, as Scorsese’s assis­tant writes, this list is a great place to start for any­one look­ing to learn more about for­eign film.

At least the first few films on the list you will find in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Huff­in­g­ton Post

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Teach­es His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing: Fea­tures 30 Video Lessons

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ate a List of 38 Essen­tial Films About Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 11 ) |

The Cry of Jazz: 1958’s Highly Controversial Film on Jazz & Race in America (With Music by Sun Ra)

in Film, Jazz, Music | October 14th, 2014

“Jazz is dead.” You can imag­ine how that state­ment, poten­tial­ly inflam­ma­to­ry even today, shook things up when film­mak­er Edward Bland dared to say it in 1958. He did­n’t cause the stir so much by say­ing the words him­self, but by putting them in the mouth of Alex, one of the main char­ac­ters in his con­tro­ver­sial “semi-doc­u­men­tary” The Cry of Jazz. Alex appears in the film as one of sev­en mem­bers of a racial­ly mixed jazz appre­ci­a­tion soci­ety, strag­glers who stay behind after a meet­ing and fall into a con­ver­sa­tion about the nature, ori­gin, and future of jazz music. “Thanks a lot, Bruce, for show­ing me how rock and roll is jazz,” says an appre­cia­tive Natal­ie, one of the white women, to one of the white men. Enter, swift­ly, Alex, one of the black men:

“Bruce? Did you tell her that rock and roll was jazz?”

“Yeah, sure. That’s what I told her. Is there some­thing wrong with that?”

“Bruce, how square can you get? Rock and roll is not jazz. Rock and roll is mere­ly an off­spring of rhythm and blues.”

the_cry_of_jazz

Debate ensues, but Alex ulti­mate­ly pre­vails, leav­ing all races present speech­less with his abil­i­ty to unite the nar­ra­tive of jazz music with the nar­ra­tive of the black Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence. We have here less a fic­tion film or a doc­u­men­tary than a type of heat­ed didac­tic essay — a cry itself, in some sense — unlike any oth­er motion pic­ture on the sub­ject. “The movie caused an uproar,” writes the New York Times’ Paul Vitel­lo in Bland­’s 2013 obit­u­ary. “Notable intel­lec­tu­als took sides. The nov­el­ist Ralph Elli­son called it offen­sive. The poet LeRoi Jones, lat­er known as Amiri Bara­ka, called it pro­found­ly insight­ful. An audi­ence dis­cus­sion after a screen­ing in 1960 in Green­wich Vil­lage became so heat­ed that the police were called. The British crit­ic Ken­neth Tynan, in a col­umn for The Lon­don Observ­er, wrote that it ‘does not real­ly belong to the his­to­ry of cin­e­mat­ic art, but it assured­ly belongs to his­to­ry’ as ‘the first film in which the Amer­i­can Negro has issued a direct chal­lenge to the white.’ ”

Where The Cry of Jazz oper­ates most straight­for­ward­ly as a doc­u­men­tary, it cap­tures the era’s extant styles of jazz (whether you con­sid­er them liv­ing or, as Alex insists, dead) as per­formed by the com­pos­er-band­leader Sun Ra and his Arkestra just a few years before his total self-trans­for­ma­tion into a sci-fi pharaoh. This pro­vides a “pul­sat­ing track of sound under the nar­ra­tion and serves to punc­tu­ate the protagonist’s long, engross­ing lec­ture with appro­pri­ate seg­ments of per­for­mance footage and musi­cal coun­ter­point,” writes poet John Sin­clair. “Inquis­i­tive view­ers may gain immense­ly from expo­sure to Bland’s fierce­ly icon­o­clas­tic expo­si­tion on the state of African Amer­i­can cre­ative music on the his­tor­i­cal cusp of the mod­ern jazz era and the free jazz, avant garde, New Black Music move­ment of the 1960s.” And on the issue of the death of jazz, I sub­mit for your con­sid­er­a­tion just four of the albums that would come out the next year: Ornette Cole­man’s The Shape of Jazz to Come, Charles Min­gus’ Min­gus Ah Um, the Dave Brubeck Quar­tet’s Time Out, and Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. A top­ic cov­ered in the film, 1959: The Year that Changed Jazz.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz by Can­non­ball Adder­ley (with Louis Arm­strong & Thelo­nious Monk)

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Photos of Hiroshima by Hiroshima Mon Amour Star Emmanuelle Riva (1958)

in Film, History, Photography | October 14th, 2014

hiroshima mon amour pix

Hiroshi­ma Mon Amour, Alain Resnais’s land­mark 1960 med­i­ta­tion on war and mem­o­ry, was Emmanuelle Riva’s first star­ring role. She plays a mar­ried actress (catch a scene here) who, while mak­ing a movie in Japan, has an affair with a Japan­ese archi­tect played by Eiji Oka­da. Screen­writer Mar­guerite Duras chis­els away at the actress’s Gal­lic reserve over the course of the film as mem­o­ries of the war, not to men­tion guilt over the affair, over­whelm her. Resnais lingers on Riva’s face as she comes apart. Her per­for­mance is as brave as it is exact. French film crit­ic Jean Domarchi once stat­ed, “Hiroshi­ma is a doc­u­men­tary on Emmanuelle Riva.”

HMA 2

As it turns out, Riva was doc­u­ment­ing Hiroshi­ma too. While film­ing on loca­tion, she took a series of pho­tographs of every­day life of a city still recov­er­ing from the war. They are a fas­ci­nat­ing slice of life from a Japan that has long dis­ap­peared. The Hiroshi­ma Riva cap­tured was still dom­i­nat­ed by dirt roads and wood­en build­ings. Peo­ple still reg­u­lar­ly wore tra­di­tion­al geta wood­en shoes.

hma 3

Chil­dren seemed to be a favorite sub­ject for Riva. She pho­tographs a flock of ele­men­tary school stu­dents walk­ing to school; a pair of boys fish­ing before the gen­baku dome – ground zero for the bomb; and a gag­gle of kids star­ing agog into the lens, no doubt curi­ous at the sight of a styl­ish French woman with an expen­sive cam­era.

hma 4

Years lat­er, Riva’s pic­tures were col­lect­ed into a book called Hiroshi­ma 1958, which, sad­ly, seems to be avail­able only in Japan. Riva, of course, went on to a cel­e­brat­ed act­ing career, includ­ing an Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed turn in Michael Haneke’s har­row­ing love sto­ry Amour.

hma 5via RocketNews24

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Alain Resnais’ Short, Evoca­tive Film Toute la mémoire du monde (1956)

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Talk About Film­mak­ing (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Inter­view

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Quentin Tarantino Directs a 1995 Episode of ER: Brings Cinematic Virtuosity to TV

in Film, Television | October 13th, 2014

Just as no list of the most 1990s-defin­ing film­mak­ers could do with­out Quentin Taran­ti­no, no list of the most 1990s-defin­ing tele­vi­sion shows could do with­out ER. The long-run­ning, award-laden med­ical dra­ma made more than a few dar­ing moves over its fif­teen years, not least its choic­es of guest direc­tors. Ear­ly in its very first sea­son (which pre­miered a month before the release of Pulp Fic­tion), ER snagged Taran­ti­no to direct the episode “Moth­er­hood,” which aired on May 11, 1995 — three days before Moth­er’s Day. “The rat­ings for ER, which are usu­al­ly through the roof, should be through the moon tonight,” wrote the Bal­ti­more Sun’s David Zurawik, “And there is enough Taran­ti­no to war­rant a bit of a buzz. One weird scene involv­ing a fight between female gang mem­bers as they are being wheeled into the emer­gency room might even be con­sid­ered inspired when judged against the usu­al stan­dards of doc­tor dra­ma. But be warned: It’s ultra-bloody.”

That quote comes from a roundup of con­tem­po­rary write-ups of the episode at Chrono­log­i­cal Snob­bery, which gets into impres­sive detail on the sto­ry behind, the plot of, the hype sur­round­ing, and the Taran­tin­ian imagery in “Moth­er­hood,” and it also offers a brief inter­view with for­mer child actor Abra­ham Ver­duz­co, who “played Palmer, one of the eight Ranger Scouts with diar­rhea.” Taran­ti­no fans of the type who would fre­quent the Quentin Taran­ti­no Archive will have rec­og­nized Ver­duz­co from his ear­li­er appear­ance in Robert Rodriguez’s Taran­ti­no-fea­tur­ing Des­per­a­do. “The episode boasts the usu­al inter­twined sto­ries of bleed­ing gang­sters, rela­tion­ship trou­ble, fam­i­ly dra­ma, preg­nan­cies, drug abuse and for­bid­den love,” says the QTA. “What makes this episode so inter­est­ing to Taran­ti­no fans are all the QT trade­marks that one can spot through the episode.” Some of these, aside from a pen­chant for vin­tage shades (“Quentin picked out the sun­glass­es and was adamant we wear them,” said actress Julian­na Mar­guiles), include:

  • Dr. Lewis wears a Yosemite Sam t‑shirt
  • Pulp Fic­tion’s Angela Jones appears as Michelle
  • A Bea­t­les song (“Black­bird”) accom­pa­nies a birth
  • The Ranger Scouts act like the Three Stooges, and Dr. Carter calls the con­stel­la­tion of the stars by the names Moe, Lar­ry, and Curly
  • A girl cuts anoth­er girl’s ear off

And a more than bit of cin­e­mat­ic vir­tu­os­i­ty comes right up front in the form of the episode’s much-dis­cussed (as recent­ly as last week, on Metafil­ter) sin­gle-take open­ing. You can see a cou­ple seg­ments of the episode right here, and for the whole thing — not to men­tion video qual­i­ty supe­ri­or to that which you get above, and for which we apol­o­gize — you need only to find disc four of the ER sea­son one DVD col­lec­tion. It makes me wish 1990s tele­vi­sion had done as much to bring auteurs into the fold at 21st-cen­tu­ry tele­vi­sion has; what I would­n’t give for a Hal Hart­ley-direct­ed episode of Sein­feld, say, or a Kevin Smith X‑Files.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Quentin Taran­ti­no Tells You About The Actors & Direc­tors Who Pro­vid­ed the Inspi­ra­tion for “Reser­voir Dogs”

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

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Empire Strikes Back Uncut: A New Fan-Made, Shot-for-Shot Remake of the 1980 Sci-Fi Classic

in Film, Sci Fi | October 11th, 2014

In 2010, devot­ed Star Wars fans released Star Wars Uncut, a mashup, scene-by-scene remake of the very first Star Wars movie.

Now comes The Empire Strikes Back Uncut. Here’s the gist:

With more than 480 fan-made seg­ments culled from over 1,500 sub­mis­sions, The Empire Strikes Back Uncut (also known as ESB Uncut) fea­tures a stun­ning mash-up of styles and film­mak­ing tech­niques, includ­ing live action, ani­ma­tion, and stop-motion. The project launched in 2013, with fans claim­ing 15-sec­ond scenes to reimag­ine as they saw fit – result­ing in sequences cre­at­ed with every­thing from action fig­ures to card­board props to stun­ning visu­al effects. Helmed by Casey Pugh, who over­saw 2010’s Emmy-win­ning Star Wars Uncut, the new film has a won­der­ful home­made charm, stands as an affec­tion­ate trib­ute to The Empire Strikes Back, and is a tes­ta­ment to the tal­ent, imag­i­na­tion, and ded­i­ca­tion of Star Wars fans.

ESB Uncut was just released yes­tery, right in time for the week­end. Below we have some more cre­ative takes on the Star Wars films to keep you enter­tained.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

Fans Recon­struct Authen­tic Ver­sion of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in The­aters in 1977

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars Gets Dubbed into Nava­jo: a Fun Way to Pre­serve and Teach a Fad­ing Lan­guage

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

1000 Frames of Hitchcock: See Each of Alfred Hitchcock’s 52 Films Reduced to 1,000 Artistic Frames

in Film | October 9th, 2014

psycho frames

Some direc­tors like John Cas­savetes and Wong Kar-wai like to dis­cov­er the movie as they are mak­ing it. Oth­ers film­mak­ers have a very clear con­cep­tion of the movie right from the begin­ning. Alfred Hitch­cock was very much in that lat­ter cat­e­go­ry. “Once the screen­play is fin­ished, I’d just as soon not make the film at all,” he once told Roger Ebert. “I have a strong­ly visu­al mind. I visu­alise a pic­ture right down to the final cuts.” And that is very much evi­dent in the final prod­uct. From the famous Psy­cho show­er scene to a wild-eyed Jim­my Stew­art dan­gling from a ledge in Ver­ti­go to Cary Grant being men­aced by a crop duster in North By North­west, Hitch­cock has pro­duced some of the most mem­o­rable, arrest­ing images of the 20th Cen­tu­ry.

British artist Dave Pat­tern set out to high­light Hitch’s visu­al genius with his 1000 Frames of Hitch­cock series, which com­press­es each of Hitchcock’s 52 major movies down to a mere 1000 frames. That’s about six sec­onds of run­ning time.

“It all start­ed when in 2003 I made a web­site that tries to gath­er infor­ma­tion about Hitch­cock DVD releas­es over the world,” Pat­tern told Dan­ish movie mag­a­zine Echo. “The qual­i­ty of the pub­li­ca­tions are very dif­fer­ent from coun­try to coun­try. It sort of snow­balled from there.”

the birds

What’s amaz­ing about this project is just how much of the movie comes through in this great­ly abbre­vi­at­ed, sound­less ver­sion. You com­plete­ly under­stand that Tip­pi Hedren is get­ting ter­ror­ized by an implaca­ble ene­my in The Birds. You don’t even need to see that malev­o­lent mur­der of crows. You can see it just in her face. At the begin­ning of the movie, she’s ele­gant, aloof and per­fect­ly com­posed. At the end of the film, she’s unkempt, bloody and bro­ken. Hitchcock’s creepy sex­u­al pol­i­tics and his famous­ly unwhole­some obses­sion with blondes shines through here.

north by northwest frames

What is utter­ly appar­ent in this project – and some­thing you might miss while watch­ing the movie — is Hitchcock’s com­plete con­trol of col­or. The palette of The Birds (mid­dle image) is dom­i­nat­ed by the col­or green, from Hedren’s out­fit to the col­or of a pick­up truck to the hue of the hills. North By North­west (bot­tom), by con­trast, is com­posed most­ly of beige and slate blue. Click on the images to view them in a larg­er for­mat.

Below, you can check out all the movies, each dis­tilled down to 1,000 frames. And, if you’re inspired to dive deep into the works of the Mas­ter of Sus­pense, you can watch 23 of Alfred Hitch­cock­’s movies for free here.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Wes Anderson’s Animated Books

in Film | October 8th, 2014

It was 2012, and Focus Fea­tures flew me and about three dozen oth­er jour­nal­ists to inter­view Wes Ander­son for his lat­est movie Moon­rise King­dom right on the beach at Cannes. Though the day was hot enough to pro­duce more than a few leath­ery top­less sun­bathers, Ander­son wore the exact ‘80s-style beige cor­duroy suit you might expect him to wear. Just like his eccen­tric, iron­ic — and giv­en the set­ting, uncom­fort­able — sar­to­r­i­al choic­es, Anderson’s movies are dis­tinc­tive from frame one. He is Hollywood’s cur­rent reign­ing for­mal­ist.

Moon­rise King­dom is prob­a­bly his most suc­cess­ful recent movie. Though the film is filled with his trade­mark sym­met­ri­cal fram­ing, dead­pan set design and off-kil­ter jux­ta­po­si­tions, the film nev­er feels like self-par­o­dy, unlike some of his pre­vi­ous movies — think Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed. Set on the remote New Pen­zance Island in 1965, Moon­rise is about a star-crossed pre-teen love affair between Sam, a pre­co­cious bespec­ta­cled boy scout in a coon­skin cap, and Suzy, a trou­bled teen who favors sad­dle shoes, rac­coon-like eye make­up and above all books. Before she steals away into the woods with Sam, she stuffs her suit­case with six of her favorite (fic­ti­tious) books, all swiped from the local library.

Ander­son fea­tures the books promi­nent­ly in the movie, giv­ing them titles like The Girl from Jupiter or Dis­ap­pear­ance of the 6th Grade. Each book was designed by artists that Ander­son per­son­al­ly com­mis­sioned. Though Suzy reads parts from three of the books in the film, Ander­son orig­i­nal­ly had a much grander vision: “At one point in the process, when she’s read­ing these pas­sages from these books,” he told Enter­tain­ment Week­ly. “I’d thought about going into ani­ma­tion.” The film­mak­er had just com­plet­ed his stop­mo­tion movie The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox; clear­ly, ani­ma­tion was on Anderson’s mind.

Ulti­mate­ly, Ander­son decid­ed against this approach, but the idea still appar­ent­ly intrigued him. So here it is as a pro­mo­tion­al piece for Moon­rise. In the span of six weeks, blind­ing­ly fast for ani­ma­tion, Ander­son and his pro­duc­er Jere­my Daw­son man­aged to ani­mate pas­sages from all six books – writ­ten by the film­mak­er – in the style of the book cov­ers. The video is host­ed by Bob Bal­a­ban who played the Moon­rise King­dom’s tuque-sport­ing nar­ra­tor.

“I think we all just pitched in and we pulled a lot of favors because it was not like we spent a ton of mon­ey doing it,” said Daw­son to EW. “Peo­ple got excit­ed about it because it was a cre­ative thing rather than if they were mak­ing a Snick­ers ad or some­thing.”

You can see the results above.

Via Enter­tain­ment Week­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

Wes Anderson’s Favorite Films: Moon­struck, Rosemary’s Baby, and Luis Buñuel’s The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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

in Education, Film, Literature, Poetry | October 6th, 2014

marilyn reading

If you’re a read­er and user of social media, you’ve like­ly test­ed your life­time read­ing list against the BBC Book Quiz.

Or per­haps you’ve allowed your worth as a read­er to be deter­mined by the num­ber of Pulitzer Prize win­ners you’ve made it through.

The Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts’ Big Read, any­one?

The 142 Books that Every Stu­dent of Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture Should Read?

The 50 Best Dystopi­an Nov­els?

Being young is no excuse! Not when the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion pub­lish­es an annu­al list of Out­stand­ing Books for the Col­lege Bound and Life­long Learn­ers.

So… how’d you do? Or should I say how’d you do in com­par­i­son to Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe? The online Mon­roe fan club Ever­last­ing Star used pho­tographs, inter­views, and a Christie’s auc­tion cat­a­logue to come up with a list of more than 400 books in her pos­ses­sion.

Did she read them all? I don’t know. Have you read every sin­gle title on your shelves? (There’s a Japan­ese word for those books. It’s Tsun­doku.)

Fem­i­nist biog­ra­ph­er Oline Eaton has a great rant on her Find­ing Jack­ie blog about the phrase “Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe read­ing,” and the 5,610,000 search engine results it yields when typed into Google:

There is, with­in Monroe’s image, a deeply root­ed assump­tion that she was an idiot, a vul­ner­a­ble and kind and lov­ing and ter­ri­bly sweet idiot, but an idiot nonethe­less. That is the assump­tion in which ‘Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe read­ing’ is entan­gled.

The pow­er of the phrase Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe read­ing’ lies in its appli­ca­tion to Mon­roe and in our assump­tion that she wouldn’t know how.

Would that every­one search­ing that phrase did so in the belief that her pas­sion for the print­ed word rivaled their own. Imag­ine legions of geeks lov­ing her for her brain, bypass­ing Sam Shaw’s icon­ic sub­way grate pho­to in favor of home print­ed pin ups depict­ing her with book in hand.

Com­mem­o­ra­tive postage stamps are nice, but per­haps a more fit­ting trib­ute would be an ALA poster. Like Eaton, when I look at that image of Mar­i­lyn hunched over James Joyce’s Ulysses (or kick­ing back read­ing Walt Whit­man’s Leaves of Grass), I don’t see some­one try­ing to pass her­self off as some­thing she’s not. I see a high school dropout caught in the act of edu­cat­ing her­self. If I saw it taped to a library shelf embla­zoned with the word “READ,” I might just sum­mon the resolve to take a stab at Ulysses myself. (I know how it ends, but that’s about it.)

See below, dear read­ers. Apolo­gies that we’re not set up to keep track of your score for you, but please let us know in the com­ments sec­tion if you’d hearti­ly sec­ond any of Mar­i­lyn’s titles, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that are less­er known or have fad­ed from the pub­lic view.

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Read­ing Chal­lenge

(Thanks to Book Tryst for com­pil­ing Ever­last­ing Star’s find­ings)

1) Let’s Make Love by Matthew Andrews (nov­el­iza­tion of the movie)

2) How To Trav­el Incog­ni­to by Lud­wig Bemel­mans

3) To The One I Love Best by Lud­wig Bemel­mans

4) Thurber Coun­try by James Thurber

5) The Fall by Albert Camus

6) Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe by George Car­pozi

7) Camille by Alexan­der Dumas

8) Invis­i­ble Man by Ralph Elli­son

9) The Boston Cook­ing-School Cook Book by Fan­nie Mer­ritt-Farmer

10) The Great Gats­by by F Scott Fitzger­ald

11) From Rus­sia With Love by Ian Flem­ing

12) The Art Of Lov­ing by Erich Fromm

13) The Prophet by Kahlil Gilbran

14) Ulysses by James Joyce

15) Stoned Like A Stat­ue: A Com­plete Sur­vey Of Drink­ing Clich­es, Prim­i­tive, Clas­si­cal & Mod­ern by Howard Kan­del & Don Safran, with an intro by Dean Mar­tin (a man who knew how to drink!)

16) The Last Temp­ta­tion Of Christ by Nikos Kazantza­kis

17) On The Road by Jack Ker­ouac

18) Select­ed Poems by DH Lawrence

19 and 20) Sons And Lovers by DH Lawrence (2 edi­tions)

21) The Portable DH Lawrence (more…)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 29 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast