Bertrand Russell’s Improbable Appearance in a Bollywood Film (1967)

in Film, Philosophy | January 15th, 2013

Here’s one for Rip­ley’s Believe It Or Not: Bertrand Rus­sell, the emi­nent math­e­mati­cian and philoso­pher, once made a cameo appear­ance in a Bol­ly­wood movie.

The year was 1967. Rus­sell was by then a very frail 95-year-old man. Besides fin­ish­ing work on his three-vol­ume auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Rus­sell was devot­ing much of his remain­ing time to the strug­gle for peace and nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment. To that end, he some­times made him­self avail­able to peo­ple he thought could help the cause. (See our March 2012 post, “How Bertrand Rus­sell Turned the Bea­t­les Against the Viet­nam War.”)

So when he was asked to appear in a movie called Aman, about a young Indi­an man who has just received his med­ical degree in Lon­don and wants to go to Japan to help vic­tims of the atom­ic bomb­ings at Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, Rus­sell said yes.

It’s a weird scene. The eager young grad­u­ate, played by Rajen­dra Kumar, is grant­ed an audi­ence with the famous philoso­pher, who gives him his bless­ing and offers a few words of wis­dom. Sad­ly, much of what Rus­sell has to say is drowned out by the Hin­di-lan­guage nar­ra­tion. But the clip above offers an intrigu­ing glimpse of Rus­sell at his home in Lon­don only three years before his death. Its appear­ance on the Inter­net has caused con­sid­er­able amuse­ment. One observ­er not­ed that, as an actor, Rus­sell has only three degrees of sep­a­ra­tion from Kevin Bacon. Truth real­ly is stranger than fic­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Face to Face with Bertrand Rus­sell: Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish

Three Pas­sions of Bertrand Rus­sell (and a Col­lec­tion of Free Texts)

Bertrand Rus­sell & Oth­er Big Thinkers in BBC Lec­ture Series (Free)

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Watch Raymond Chandler’s Long-Unnoticed Cameo in Double Indemnity

in Film, Literature | January 15th, 2013

Philip Mar­lowe’s cre­ator Ray­mond Chan­dler did not, to put it mild­ly, seek out the lime­light. Any biog­ra­phy of that most assid­u­ous­ly stud­ied noir nov­el­ist can tell you so, but none can tell you that, albeit for less than a minute, Chan­dler appeared in a clas­sic of the sil­ver screen. The books have a good excuse for leav­ing out that strik­ing­ly unchar­ac­ter­is­tic detail: it took cinephiles decades to notices the cameo. “More than 60 years after its release, a French cin­e­ma his­to­ri­an and two US crime-writ­ers almost simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hap­pened on the same bizarre dis­cov­ery — that Ray­mond Chan­dler, uncred­it­ed and pre­vi­ous­ly unno­ticed, has a tiny cameo in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty,” writes the Guardian’s Adri­an Woot­ton. “On 14 Jan­u­ary, the Amer­i­can mys­tery writer Mark Cog­gins, tipped off by anoth­er writer, John Bill­heimer, post­ed the news on his web­site, Rior­dan’s desk, while the French jour­nal­ist Olivi­er Eyquem, wrote about on his blog on March 30.”

While I per­son­al­ly rec­om­mend using this rev­e­la­tion as an excuse to watch Bil­ly Wilder’s immor­tal James M. Cain adap­ta­tion again in its entire­ty, you can view a clip of Chan­dler’s brief appear­ance in it above, which includes a slow-motion instant replay. “We will prob­a­bly nev­er know whose idea it was it to put Chan­dler in front of the cam­era, or if it took a few drinks to get him in the mood,” writes the Los Ange­les Times’ Car­olyn Kel­logg about this rare cin­e­mat­ic glimpse of the writer who did so much to earn Los Ange­les its place on the pulp-lit map. “And no one has suc­cess­ful­ly deci­phered the cov­er of what he’s read­ing, which would be nice to know too.” Alas, from this footage of lit­tle more than a seat­ed Chan­dler look­ing up from a book, we can expect to derive no seri­ous insights into his life or work; for those, we’ll need to go right back to the biogra­phies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray­mond Chan­dler & Ian Flem­ing in Con­ver­sa­tion (1958)

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

The Adven­tures of Philip Mar­lowe: The Radio Episodes

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 Very First Film of J.G. Ballard’s Crash, Starring Ballard Himself (1971)

in Film, Literature, Television | January 14th, 2013

The Collins Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary defines “Bal­lar­dian” as “resem­bling or sug­ges­tive of the con­di­tions described in J. G. Bal­lard’s nov­els and sto­ries, espe­cial­ly dystopi­an moder­ni­ty, bleak man-made land­scapes and the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of tech­no­log­i­cal, social or envi­ron­men­tal devel­op­ments.” You’ll find no more dis­tilled dose of the Bal­lar­dian than in Bal­lard’s book The Atroc­i­ty Exhi­bi­tion, a 1969 exper­i­men­tal nov­el, or col­lec­tion of frag­ments, or what’s been called a col­lec­tion of “con­densed nov­els.” Sub­ject to an obscen­i­ty tri­al in the Unit­ed States and the sub­se­quent pulp­ing of near­ly a whole print run, the book has earned a per­ma­nent place in the canon of con­tro­ver­sial lit­er­a­ture. Its twelfth chap­ter, “Crash!”, even pro­vid­ed the seed for a Bal­lard nov­el to come: 1973’s Crash, a sto­ry of sym­phorophil­ia which David Cro­nen­berg adapt­ed into a film 23 years lat­er. The movie, in its turn, stoked a furor in the Unit­ed King­dom, cul­mi­nat­ing in a Dai­ly Mail cam­paign to ban it. But as far as film­ing mate­r­i­al born of Bal­lard’s fas­ci­na­tion with the inter­sec­tion of auto wrecks and sex­u­al­i­ty, Cro­nen­berg did­n’t get there first.

Susan Emer­ling and Zoe Beloff drew from Crash the nov­el to make the still-unre­leased Night­mare Angel in 1986, but fif­teen years before that, Harley Coke­liss turned “Crash!” the chap­ter into Crash! the short film (also known as The Atroc­i­ty Exhi­bi­tion). Cast­ing Bal­lard him­self in the star­ring role and Gabrielle Drake (sis­ter of singer-song­writer Nick Drake) oppo­site, Coke­liss crafts a vision almost oppres­sive­ly of the sev­en­ties: the pro­tag­o­nist’s wide, striped shirt col­lar dom­i­nates his even wider jack­et col­lar below the grim vis­age he wears while ensconced in the suit of armor that is his hulk­ing Amer­i­can vehi­cle. “I think the key image of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry is the man in the motor car,” Bal­lard says in voiceover. “Have we reached a point now in the sev­en­ties where we only make sense in terms of these huge tech­no­log­i­cal sys­tems? I think so myself, and that it is the vital job of the writer to try to ana­lyze and under­stand the huge sig­nif­i­cance of this met­al­lized dream.” If this Bal­lar­dian vision res­onates with you, see also Simon Sel­l­ars’ thor­ough essay on the film at fan site Bal­lar­dian.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Sci-Fi Author J.G. Bal­lard Pre­dicts the Rise of Social Media (1977)

Hear Five JG Bal­lard Sto­ries Pre­sent­ed as Radio Dra­mas

J.G. Ballard’s Exper­i­men­tal Text Col­lages: His 1958 For­ay into Avant-Garde Lit­er­a­ture

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

in Film, Writing | January 12th, 2013

Here’s a fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle win­dow into the work­ing habits of one our most bril­liant and pro­lif­ic artists. It’s from Robert B. Wei­de’s 2011 PBS film Woody Allen: A Doc­u­men­tary. In the scene above, Allen shows us the machine he has used for six­ty years, the only type­writer he has ever owned: an ear­ly fifties man­u­al Olympia SM‑3. “I bought this when I was six­teen,” Allen says. “It still works like a tank.”

Every com­e­dy sketch, every screen­play, every essay ever writ­ten by Allen was com­posed on the one type­writer. When Wei­de asks Allen how he man­ages with­out the “cut-and-paste” func­tions of a word proces­sor, he pulls out a pair of scis­sors and an old Swing­line sta­pler. “It’s very prim­i­tive, I know,” says Allen, “but it works very well for me.”

“Allen’s per­sis­tence in using the one and only type­writer of his life, and in prac­tic­ing cut-and-sta­ple edit­ing are cer­tain­ly curi­ous, quaint, idio­syn­crat­ic, even endear­ing,” writes Richard Brody in the Front Row blog at The New York­er; “but they’re also proof on the wing of two of Allen’s life­long qualities–untimeliness and hermeticism–as well as of the endur­ing strug­gle in his films between writ­ing and expe­ri­ence.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Woody Allen Answers 12 Uncon­ven­tion­al Ques­tions

Woody Allen Box­es a Kan­ga­roo, 1967

Woody Allen Talks With the Reverand Bil­ly Gra­ham

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Tim Burton Shoots Two Music Videos for The Killers

in Film, Music | January 11th, 2013

Nobody could ever accuse Tim Bur­ton of under­pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The past decade has seen him not only direct sev­en fea­ture films but step into the music video game as well. Most direc­tors inclined to do music videos begin there in order to tran­si­tion to full-fledged movies, but Bur­ton has, to put it mild­ly, nev­er hewn to tra­di­tion. At the top of this post, you can watch his very first music video, pro­duced in 2006 for the song “Bones” by post-punk revival­ists The Killers. Fea­tur­ing mod­el Devon Aoki and 90210 star Michael Ste­ger, the video shows off Bur­ton’s sen­si­bil­i­ties both by plun­der­ing the his­to­ry of ick­i­ly thrilling and sly­ly trans­gres­sive cin­e­ma — pieces of Loli­ta, Crea­ture from the Black Lagoon, and Jason and the Arg­onauts appear — and by mak­ing much the­mat­ic and aes­thet­ic use of the human skele­ton. Most of its action takes place in an ear­ly-six­ties desert dri­ve-in the­ater gone to seed, which seems to me the ide­al venue in which to screen Bur­ton’s fea­tures.

The imag­i­na­tive auteur’s sec­ond and most recent music video came out just this past Sep­tem­ber. Work­ing again in the ser­vice of The Killers, Bur­ton dreamed up anoth­er piece of haunt­ed whim­sy for their song “Here With Me”. In it, a black-clad, seri­ous-eyed ado­les­cent boy — a Bur­ton­ian arche­type if ever there was one — steals and makes a com­pan­ion of a wax man­nequin mod­eled after his favorite B‑movie actress. Fans can thrill to the fact that, to fill the role of this B‑movie actress, in comes Winona Ryder, star of the beloved Bur­ton col­lab­o­ra­tions Beetle­juice and Edward Scis­sorhands. Ryder has led a career filled with its share of both B- and A‑movies, but to which of those lev­els do Bur­ton’s rise? Nei­ther, it would seem, or per­haps both at once, or, even more like­ly, to the lim­i­nal state in between — a hard-to-define psy­cho­log­i­cal space, both Bur­ton’s boost­ers and detrac­tors would agree, of his very own.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tim Bur­ton: A Look Inside His Visu­al Imag­i­na­tion

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

Vin­cent: Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Six Ear­ly Short Films By Tim Bur­ton

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Making of The Blues Brothers: When Belushi and Aykroyd Went on a Mission for Comedy & Music

in Comedy, Film, Music | January 11th, 2013

Before you close out the week, you’ll want to spend some time with Ned Zeman’s piece in Van­i­ty Fair, “Soul Men: The Mak­ing of The Blues Broth­ers.” It brings us back to the 1970s, when John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd labored to bring their char­ac­ters, Jake and Elwood Blues, onto the nation­al stage. Despite being the stars of Sat­ur­day Night Live, Belushi and Aykroyd had to cajole the show’s pro­duc­er Lorne Michaels into let­ting them per­form as The Blues Broth­ers on late night TV. First, Michaels let them warm up SNL audi­ences before shows. Then, in 1976, Michaels let the Blues Broth­ers make their first live appear­ance. But there was a rub. They had to dress as Killer Bees and not as “John Lee Hook­er gone Hasidic.” Only in April, 1978, did Jake and Elwood make their true SNL debut as a musi­cal act (see below).

Zeman’s piece focus­es most­ly on the next chap­ter in the his­to­ry of The Blues Broth­ers — the mak­ing of the now leg­endary film. That had its own set of dif­fi­cul­ties. Big bud­gets, big ambi­tions and big coke addic­tions, all threat­en­ing to derail the project. Down to the very last moment, the film looked like a guar­an­teed finan­cial bust, to the tune of $27 mil­lion. But, of course, that’s not how things turned out.

Above, you can watch The Mak­ing of The Blues Broth­ers, a 2005 doc­u­men­tary that came out with the 25th anniver­sary re-release of the com­ic mas­ter­piece. Below, watch their SNL debut.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Belushi’s Impro­vised Screen Test for Sat­ur­day Night Live (1975)

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

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An Anti, Anti-Smoking Announcement from John Waters

in Comedy, Film | January 7th, 2013

The idea of smok­ing in a movie the­ater, or any­where one might go to have a good time, seems out­landish in 21st-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, far more fan­tas­ti­cal than most of what you’d actu­al­ly see pro­ject­ed onscreen. I don’t smoke, but it cer­tain­ly would­n’t occur to me to start while moviego­ing, a pur­suit that, here in Los Ange­les, takes up a con­sid­er­able chunk of my free time. Though I attend screen­ings at the Nuart The­atre on San­ta Mon­i­ca Boule­vard with some fre­quen­cy, I’ve sad­ly missed the hey­day of the pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment above. Bad-taste-is-good-taste film­mak­er John Waters shot the PSA for the Nuart The­atre decades ago in appre­ci­a­tion for their long-run­ning show­ings of his break­through fea­ture Pink Flamin­gos. “I’m sup­posed to announce that there’s no smok­ing in this the­ater,” Waters says to the cam­era, after tak­ing a drag on his cig­a­rette, “which is just one of the most ridicu­lous things I’ve heard of in my life.”

“How can any­one sit through the length of a film,” he con­tin­ues, “espe­cial­ly a Euro­pean film, and not have a cig­a­rette?” Indeed, the Nuart today remains a reli­able source for inter­est­ing pic­tures, often of Euro­pean ori­gin. So, I’ve heard, was Berke­ley’s UC The­ater, anoth­er fre­quent screen­er of Waters’ “no-smok­ing” PSA, before it closed its doors in 2001. When Land­mark The­atres own­er Gary Mey­er pur­chased both the Nuart and the UC in 1974, they became the first in that now-for­mi­da­ble chain of pop­u­lar-art house crossover venues. Revival cin­e­ma has seen some­thing of a resur­gence in recent years, giv­ing Land­mark more com­pe­ti­tion than it once faced, and though some the­aters have brought gourmet food and alco­hol into the expe­ri­ence, cig­a­rettes seem unlike­ly to make a return. What the moviego­ing world needs now is a clip from Waters denounc­ing cell­phone usage — but he’s got to do it seri­ous­ly. Or as seri­ous­ly as he can.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Lick the Star: Sofia Coppola’s Very First Film Follows a 7th-Grade Conspiracy (1998)

in Film | January 4th, 2013

Young women trapped in gild­ed cages: that’s the theme that comes to mind when think­ing about the films of Sofia Cop­po­la, so read­i­ly that her Wikipedia page uses the phrase almost ver­ba­tim. The Vir­gin Sui­cides starred five sub­ur­ban sis­ters under ever-tight­en­ing parental lock­down. Lost in Trans­la­tion found a rock pho­tog­ra­pher’s wife free yet adrift in a swank Tokyo hotel. Marie Antoinette made a sub­ject of, well, Marie Antoinette, and Some­where left its eleven-year-old daugh­ter of a dis­af­fect­ed movie star with no choice but turn up on on her dad’s Chateau Mar­mont doorstep. Even now, the film­mak­er com­pletes work on The Bling Ring, whose tit­u­lar clutch of teenagers find them­selves dri­ven to bur­gle the homes of Paris Hilton, Lind­say Lohan, and oth­er such lumi­nar­ies, sure­ly out of sheer ennui. But the most vicious expres­sion of the sig­na­ture Sofia Cop­po­la set­up came in her very first film, the 1998 short Lick the Star.

Set amid the aris­to­crat­ic court-lev­el intrigue of a mid­dle-class junior high school, the sto­ry traces the break­down of a con­spir­a­cy by the girls, led by sev­enth-grade queen bee Chloe, to grad­u­al­ly poi­son the boys with dos­es of arsenic. In what we by now will have come to think of as a Cop­polan turn, Chloe gets the idea from V.C. Andrews’ Flow­ers in the Attic, copies of which she pass­es around to the under­lings she pres­sures into help­ing her exe­cute the plan. Alas, what goes for the best-laid plans of mice and men goes also for those of spite­ful thir­teen-year-old girls. Shot on black-and-white 16-mil­lime­ter film, Lick the Star would at first seem to fit right in, aes­thet­i­cal­ly, with the oth­er quick-and-dirty debuts of the 1990s’ Amer­i­can indie boom, but a series of strik­ing styl­is­tic touch­es soon set it apart. More evi­dence for Cop­po­la’s defend­ers, who argue against the detrac­tors who accuse her of hav­ing got­ten by on nepo­tism. Then again, with­out the right con­nec­tions, could she have cast Peter Bog­danovich as the prin­ci­pal?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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