Photographer Revisits Abandoned Movie Sets for Star Wars and Other Classic Films in North Africa

in Film, Photography | May 17th, 2013

Tunisia

Mak­ing a movie? Need to shoot some large-scale desert scenes? You might con­sid­er tak­ing your pro­duc­tion to North Africa, where you’ll find not only a great many acres of sand, but will fol­low in the foot­steps of some of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s high­est-pro­file film­mak­ers. Just above, you see a pic­ture of one of the many Star Wars sets still stand­ing in Tozeur, Tunisia, 36 years after the shoot. New York pho­tog­ra­ph­er Rä di Mar­ti­no has tak­en it upon her­self to deter­mine the loca­tions and col­lect images of these cin­e­mat­ic ruins in the projects “No More Stars” and “Every World’s a Stage.” Giv­en the sur­pris­ing­ly sound con­di­tion of some of these sets — that dry air must have some­thing to do with it — I fore­see an entre­pre­neur­ial oppor­tu­ni­ty in the vein of all those New Zealand Lord of the Rings fan tours.

Even if Star Wars does­n’t get you excit­ed enough to book a trip to Tunisia, a vis­it to Moroc­co may still inter­est you. Di Mar­ti­no’s short Petite his­toire des plateaux aban­don­nès (Short His­to­ry of Aban­doned Sets) seeks out more such long-silent fake towns, fortress­es, and gas sta­tions around Ouarza­zate, orig­i­nal­ly used for every­thing from cheap hor­ror movies to Lawrence of Ara­bia. There, a group of kids recites, dead­pan, scenes from the var­i­ous pro­duc­tions that swung through town well before they were born. These sur­viv­ing chunks of arti­fice, meant only for the cam­era, have found the cam­era again — or, rather, the cam­era has found them — with results that now look more inter­est­ing than many of the major films that com­mis­sioned them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of The Empire Strikes Back Show­cased on Long-Lost Dutch TV Doc­u­men­tary

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

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

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The Poetry of Bruce Lee: Discover the Artistic Life of the Martial Arts Icon

in Film, Poetry, Sports, Television | May 14th, 2013

In the final months of his short life, Bruce Lee wrote a per­son­al essay, “In My Own Process” where he said, “Basi­cal­ly, I have always been a mar­tial artist by choice and actor by pro­fes­sion. But, above all, I am hop­ing to actu­al­ize myself to be an artist of life along the way.” If you’re famil­iar with Bruce Lee, you know that he stud­ied phi­los­o­phy at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, and even when he audi­tioned for The Green Hor­net in 1964 (and showed off his amaz­ing kung fu moves), he took pains to explain the phi­los­o­phy under­ly­ing the mar­tial arts.

Lee was­n’t just a philoso­pher. He was also a poet and a trans­la­tor of poet­ry. In the book, Bruce Lee: Artist of Life, John Lit­tle has pub­lished 21 orig­i­nal poems found with­in Lee’s per­son­al archive. The poems, Lit­tle writes, “are, by Amer­i­can stan­dards, rather dark — reflect­ing the deep­er, less exposed recess­es of the human psy­che… Many seem to express a return­ing sen­ti­ment of the fleet­ing nature of life, love and the pas­sion of human long­ing.” Above, you can see Shan­non Lee, the daugh­ter of Bruce Lee, read a poem pub­lished in Lit­tle’s col­lec­tion. It’s called “Boat­ing on Lake Wash­ing­ton.” Imme­di­ate­ly below, she reads “IF” by Rud­yard Kipling, a poem her father loved so much that he had it engraved on a plaque and mount­ed on the wall in his home.

Final­ly, we leave you with Lee’s trans­la­tion of anoth­er favorite poem, “The Frost” by Tzu Yeh. The video fea­tures pieces of his hand­writ­ten trans­la­tion.

http://youtu.be/PAektkXMxeg

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Lee: The Lost TV Inter­view

Watch 10-Year-Old Bruce Lee in His First Star­ring Role (1950)

Bruce Lee Plays Ping Pong with Nunchucks

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Freiheit, George Lucas’ Short Student Film About a Fatal Run from Communism (1966)

in Film | May 10th, 2013

Here we have an ear­ly short film by Star Wars mas­ter­mind George Lucas that con­tains no invent­ed worlds, elab­o­rate spe­cial effects, or con­scious myth­mak­ing. But Frei­heit, the third film Lucas made while a film-school stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and the first with a nar­ra­tive, has the kind of impact that con­vinces you its fledg­ling cre­ator just might have an inter­est­ing pic­ture or two in him. Titled with the Ger­man word for “free­dom,” the short uses Sovi­et-era Ger­many as a set­ting and free­dom as its dri­ving con­cept, fol­low­ing a young pro­tag­o­nist trapped on the wrong side of the Berlin bor­der who attempts a flight from his restric­tive soci­ety but meets a grim end.

Even those of you who don’t respect what we now think of as George Lucas’ brand of moviemak­ing may find much of inter­est in Frei­heit’s three-minute run­time. From the title card read­ing “a film by LUCAS” onward, you know you’re in for more of an “art” film than you may have expect­ed. Lucas com­bines still with mov­ing images and dynam­i­cal­ly varies the speed of the lat­ter to build as much visu­al inter­est as pos­si­ble in a short time (and on an undoubt­ed­ly near-nonex­is­tent bud­get). He cre­ates an urgent mood quick­ly by using both music and abstract sound, ulti­mate­ly intro­duc­ing a col­lec­tion of spo­ken words about free­dom itself. Lucas would clear­ly remain fas­ci­nat­ed, even while mak­ing block­buster space operas, by the nature of oppres­sive pow­er struc­tures, but this lit­tle project reveals his aes­thet­ic road not tak­en.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

David Lynch’s Ear­ly Short Film

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

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Rare 1952 Film: William Faulkner on His Native Soil in Oxford, Mississippi

in Film, Literature | May 9th, 2013

Ear­ly in his life, William Faulkn­er had an epiphany: “I dis­cov­ered that my own lit­tle postage stamp of native soil was worth writ­ing about, and that I would nev­er live long enough to exhaust it.” And so, as he told The Paris Review in 1956, “by sub­li­mat­ing the actu­al into the apoc­ryphal” Faulkn­er was able to take his home­town of Oxford, Mis­sis­sip­pi, and the sur­round­ing coun­try­side and use it to cre­ate his own imag­i­nary cos­mos. He called it Yok­na­p­ataw­pha Coun­ty.

In Novem­ber of 1952, the nor­mal­ly reclu­sive Faulkn­er allowed a film crew into his seclud­ed world at Oxford to make a short doc­u­men­tary about his life. The film, shown here in five pieces, was fund­ed by the Ford Foun­da­tion and broad­cast on Decem­ber 28, 1952 on the CBS tele­vi­sion pro­gram Omnibus. The script­ed film re-enacts events from Novem­ber 1950, when Faulkn­er received the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, through the spring of 1951, when he spoke at his daugh­ter Jil­l’s high school grad­u­a­tion.

There are scenes of Faulkn­er at Rowan Oak, his ante­bel­lum house on the edge of Oxford, and at Green­field Farm, 17 miles away, where he is shown dri­ving a trac­tor and talk­ing with work­ers. Faulkn­er is also shown briefly with his wife, Estelle, and with sev­er­al promi­nent Oxford res­i­dents, includ­ing drug­gist Mac Reed, Oxford Eagle edi­tor Phil Mullen, who col­lab­o­rat­ed  with the film­mak­ers on the script, and lawyer Phil Stone, who was an ear­ly lit­er­ary men­tor and cham­pi­on of Faulkn­er. Accord­ing to Joseph Blot­ner in his biog­ra­phy Faulkn­er, the famous writer put aside his usu­al can­tan­ker­ous­ness when the film­mak­ers arrived in Oxford:

To the plea­sure of direc­tor Howard T. Mag­wood and his ten-man crew, Faulkn­er showed him­self to be a con­sid­er­ate host and an inter­est­ed actor. He even offered Mullen some advice on read­ing his lines. He was at ease when he appeared with Mac Reed, but in a scene with Phil Stone he seemed stiff and dis­tant.

The uneasi­ness between Faulkn­er and Stone may have had some­thing to do with Stone’s feel­ing (as Mullen report­ed­ly said lat­er) that Faulkn­er had come down with a bad case of “Nobelitis in the Head.” Actu­al­ly the entire film is stiff and unre­al­is­tic. It’s a bit of a shock to see Faulkn­er, a mas­ter of the nar­ra­tive form, going through the motions as a bad actor in a hor­ri­bly writ­ten sto­ry about his own life. But any lit­er­ary fan should be fas­ci­nat­ed by this rare glimpse of the mas­ter at home on his own lit­tle postage stamp of native soil.

 

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

Drink­ing with William Faulkn­er

Sev­en Tips From William Faulkn­er on How to Write Fic­tion

William Faulkn­er Explains Why Writ­ing is Best Left to Scoundrels

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Tom Waits Sings and Tells Stories in Tom Waits: A Day in Vienna, a 1979 Austrian Film

in Film, Music | May 8th, 2013

The film begins at a derelict gas sta­tion. A paper sign, peel­ing from the wall, warns in Ger­man that open flames and smok­ing are dan­ger­ous and strict­ly for­bid­den. In walks Tom Waits, smok­ing a cig­a­rette.

“This reminds me of a place I used to work in Nation­al City, Cal­i­for­nia, called Spot­co Self Ser­vice,” Waits says as he leans against a pump. “I worked for a gen­tle­man named Charles Spot­co. I was always late for work. I used to stay out at night. I’d come drag­ging to work, used to get there about ten-thir­ty in the morn­ing. He’d chew me out and scream at me for being late. He always said I’d nev­er amount to noth­ing. I nev­er thought I’d be stand­ing in a gas sta­tion in Vien­na Aus­tria. If I’d of told him that one day, Spot­co, I’ll be lean­ing on a gas pump at a gas sta­tion in Vien­na Aus­tria, he would have said you got­ta be out of your mind.”

The scene is from Tom Waits: A Day in Vien­na, a half-hour Aus­tri­an TV film shot on April 19, 1979, and shown above in its entire­ty. Film­mak­ers Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossach­er approached Waits when he arrived in Vien­na on a short Euro­pean tour, accord­ing to Bar­ney Hoskyns in Low­side of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits. “He came in from Ams­ter­dam say­ing he had­n’t slept all night, but he agreed on the spot to let us film him,” Rossach­er told Hoskyns. “He did­n’t want to do a prop­er inter­view but instead he want­ed to tell sto­ries.”

Dolezal and Rossach­er drove Waits to the old gas sta­tion and lat­er to a Greek cafe, where he told a com­ic sto­ry about a sax­o­phone play­er. At the Konz­erthaus that night they filmed Waits and his band per­form­ing “Sweet Lit­tle Bul­let From a Pret­ty Blue Gun,” “Shake, Rat­tle and Roll” and “Christ­mas Card from a Hook­er in Min­neapo­lis.” Back­stage before the encore, Waits is shown pac­ing back and forth, singing “When the Saints Go March­ing In.” After­ward, in a lounge, he sits down at a piano and plays a few bars of “I Can’t Wait to Get Off Work” before danc­ing with a bar girl and retir­ing for the night.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Tom Waits and Kei­th Richards Sing Sea Song “Shenan­doah” for New Pirate-Themed CD: Lis­ten Online

Tom Waits Shows Us How Not to Get a Date on Valentine’s Day

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Steven Soderbergh Writes Twitter Novella After His Retirement From Filmmaking

in Film, Literature, Twitter | May 8th, 2013

How does one read Twit­ter lit­er­a­ture? Your thoughts are as good as mine. I sup­pose I’ll have to learn or end up in the ash heap of old-timey turn­ers of pages. Because Twit Lit is upon us, man­i­fest­ed by Jen­nifer Egan and now, under the twit­ter han­dle “Bitchu­a­tion,” by mer­cu­r­ial film­mak­er Steven Soder­bergh. Hav­ing announced his retire­ment from film­mak­ing in 2011, Soder­bergh made anoth­er announce­ment at the San Fran­cis­co Film Fes­ti­val on the State of Cin­e­ma (video above, tran­script here). The fol­low­ing day, Soderbergh’s Twit­ter novel­la Glue began with the lacon­ic April 28 tweet “I will now attempt to tweet a novel­la called GLUE.”

twitlit

Some unique fea­tures of Twit Lit: Soder­bergh can twit­pic an estab­lish­ing shot—which he does, of Ams­ter­dam—along with pics of oth­er loca­tions (or just vague­ly sug­ges­tive images). The indi­vid­ual tweets often read like Horse ebooks absur­di­ties. He’s up to Chap­ter Four­teen now. The lat­er tweets repli­cate screen­play dia­logue, with copi­ous inser­tions of BEAT to sig­ni­fy dra­mat­ic paus­es. Tak­en togeth­er, I sup­pose there’s coher­ence, though as I admit­ted above, I have not mas­tered the abil­i­ty to pull tweets togeth­er into longer text in my mind, Twit­ter being where I go when my atten­tion span is spent.

I leave it to savvi­er, more patient read­ers to judge the suc­cess of Soderbergh’s attempt. It may suf­fice to say that his pes­simism about the state of film does not apply to Twit­ter Lit. Or maybe he’s just pass­ing time before he makes movies again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read, Hear, and See Tweet­ed Four Sto­ries by Jen­nifer Egan, Author of A Vis­it from the Goon Squad

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness 

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Growing Up John Waters: The Oddball Filmmaker Catalogues His Many Formative Rebellions (1993)

in Film | May 7th, 2013

John Waters seems, now, to have a grand old time being John Waters. But what kind of tri­als must the direc­tor of Pink Flamin­gos have endured grow­ing up in mid­cen­tu­ry sub­ur­ban Amer­i­ca with his dis­tinc­tive set of inter­ests, pro­cliv­i­ties, and aes­thet­ics? The half-hour Chan­nel 4 doc­u­men­tary Grow­ing Up John Waters asks the film­mak­er direct­ly, and he responds with sto­ries of the many acts of rebel­lion he’s had to engage in, from child­hood through adult­hood, to reach his full taste-trans­gress­ing poten­tial. Along the way, we get his always enter­tain­ing­ly askew (if ulti­mate­ly sen­si­ble) per­spec­tives on the ear­ly six­ties, reli­gion, the Cold War, sports, shoplift­ing, the Civ­il Rights move­ment, and Elvis.

Rebel­lion John Waters-style, as fans would expect, bears lit­tle resem­blance to the ways we’ve long expect­ed kids to push back against author­i­ty. “What were your child­hood fan­tasies?” the inter­view­er asks as an open­er. “I ain’t tellin’ you,” Waters responds. “If I ever write about my sex life, I’m mak­ing the mon­ey on it, not Chan­nel 4.” And indeed, you can read much in his three books of prose now avail­able, but Grow­ing Up John Waters by no means skips on the insight, even in mat­ters cop­u­la­to­ry. While dis­cussing the sur­re­al nature of his movies’ love scenes, for instance, Waters makes an admis­sion that fore­shad­ows the theme of A Dirty Shame, which he would make a decade lat­er: “I love sex. But it would be bet­ter if I had thought it up.”

(via Dan­ger­ous Minds)

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

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

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Revisit Martin Scorsese’s Hand-Drawn Storyboards for Taxi Driver

in Film | May 6th, 2013

Any­one who’s watched Mar­tin Scors­ese’s Taxi Dri­ver sure­ly remem­bers, or has remained haunt­ed by, many images from the film, most of which — if not all— began as hum­ble pen­cil draw­ings. Like many major motion pic­tures, Taxi Dri­ver began not just as a script but also as a sto­ry­board, the piece of com­ic book-like sequen­tial art film­mak­ers use to plan shots, cam­era move­ments, and char­ac­ter place­ments. Some direc­tors, like Rid­ley Scott, spend time craft­ing detailed sto­ry­boards, while oth­ers, like the thor­ough­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al Wern­er Her­zog, don’t use them at all. Scors­ese falls some­where in between, sketch­ing out sto­ry­board pan­els that feel more like brief notes to him­self and his clos­est col­lab­o­ra­tors. You can see them along­side the Taxi Dri­ver scenes they pro­duced in the video above.

td storyboard

“Sto­ry­boards express what I want to com­mu­ni­cate,” Scors­ese told Phaidon in 2011 for an arti­cle on the exhi­bi­tion “Between Film and Art: Sto­ry­boards from Hitch­cock to Spiel­berg.” “They show how I would imag­ine a scene and how it should move to the next.” And the effect on his process of using as seem­ing­ly flim­sy a tool as a pen­cil? “The pen­cil line leaves lit­tle impres­sion on the paper, so if the sto­ry­board is pho­to­copied it los­es some­thing. I refer back to my orig­i­nal draw­ings in order for me to con­jure up the idea I had when I saw the pen­cil line made.” Every film­mak­er has their own way of doing things, and as you can see when the video lines up these pen­cil draw­ings with (mil­lions of dol­lars lat­er) the fin­ished sequences, Scors­ese’s method gets results. “These sto­ry­boards are not the only means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for what I imag­ine,” the direc­tor adds at the arti­cle’s end, “but they are the point where I begin.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Mar­tin Scors­ese Presents The Blues: A Film Trib­ute to America’s Great Musi­cal Tra­di­tion

Mar­tin Scors­ese Brings “Lost” Hitch­cock Film to Screen in Short Faux Doc­u­men­tary

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

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