Sketches of Artists by the Late New Media Designer Hillman Curtis

in Art, Film | May 21st, 2012

Hill­man Cur­tis began his career in the San Fran­cis­co new wave group Mrs. Green, served as Macro­me­di­a’s design direc­tor, found­ed the design firm hill­man­cur­tis, Inc., wrote man­u­als on new media, and shot short doc­u­men­taries. He accom­plished much of note across the design pro­fes­sions before his untime­ly pass­ing last month, and these projects reveal his great affin­i­ty for like-mind­ed­ly mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary and aes­thet­i­cal­ly inclined cre­ators. He won a great deal of his inter­net fame exam­in­ing just such peo­ple in the Artist Series, a cycle of five-to-ten minute pro­files of, broad­ly speak­ing, his col­leagues. These include Mil­ton Glaser, the man behind the look of the immor­tal I Love New York cam­paign; David Car­son, art direc­tor of the nineties’ cultish­ly cov­et­ed rock mag­a­zine Ray Gun; and Mark Romanek, direc­tor of strik­ing com­mer­cials and fea­ture films like One Hour Pho­to.

At the top of this post, you’ll find Cur­tis’ Artist Series short on Daniel Libe­skind, the archi­tect over­see­ing the rebuild­ing of the World Trade Cen­ter. It exam­ines the archi­tec­t’s build­ings, his sketch­es, his meet­ings, and his ideas about the built envi­ron­ment as a tool for lib­er­a­tion rather than a “neu­tral world that con­firms all our ideas.” Ulti­mate­ly, Libe­skind asks this of his craft, his pro­fes­sion, and his world­view: “How will it car­ry peo­ple into a world that is good?” Direct­ly above is Cur­tis’ pro­file of graph­ic design­er Paula Sch­er, who talks about the speed with which she sketched the Citibank logo. The client seems to have balked at this, assum­ing that any­thing so quick­ly cre­at­ed could­n’t pos­si­bly war­rant the cost. Sch­er argues that, while it appeared to take her only a sec­ond, it real­ly took her “a sec­ond and 34 years,” “a sec­ond and every expe­ri­ence and every movie and every thing of my life that’s in my head.” Nei­ther she nor any­one else in the Artist Series sees divi­sions between their work, their life, and the rest of human­i­ty. Hill­man Cur­tis, by all accounts, lived the same way.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pow­ers of Ten: The 1968 Doc­u­men­tary by Leg­endary Design­ers Ray and Charles Eames

Pao­la Antonel­li on Design as the Inter­face Between Progress and Human­i­ty

Clas­sic Jazz Album Cov­ers Ani­mat­ed, or the Re-Birth of Cool

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Miracle of Flight, the Classic Early Animation by Terry Gilliam

in Animation, Comedy, Film | May 18th, 2012

As Michael Palin once put it, “there’s no get­ting away from the wit, won­der and wiz­ardry of the man Cahiers du Ciné­ma once described as Ter­ry Gilliam.”

Those qual­i­ties are clear­ly vis­i­ble in this very fun­ny ear­ly film by Gilliam called The Mir­a­cle of Flight. The film was made in 1971 for the Amer­i­can-British TV show The Mar­ty Feld­man Com­e­dy Machine. Mon­ty Python was on hia­tus that year, so Gilliam went to work for the short-lived Com­e­dy Machine, cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­it sequence and var­i­ous ani­mat­ed fea­tures using his trade­mark air­brush and paper cutout tech­niques. (Watch his primer on doing your own cutout ani­ma­tion here.) The mate­r­i­al for The Mir­a­cle of Flight was appar­ent­ly pack­aged as a stand-alone film in 1974, right after Gilliam’s first film, Sto­ry­time.  It was lat­er used as a bonus fea­ture before the­atri­cal screen­ings of Gilliam movies, and dur­ing live Python per­for­mances. The film ver­sion is slight­ly dif­fer­ent from the one aired on the Com­e­dy Machine. Accord­ing to Smarter Than The Aver­age, “for the the­atri­cal ver­sion it lost a griz­zly punch­line where a man who had failed at his attempt to fly by emu­lat­ing the ergonom­ics of a bird takes his revenge by rip­ping the bird to pieces.” The writer then goes on to describe details only a Python fanat­ic could notice:

The Mir­a­cle of Flight in par­tic­u­lar is a cor­nu­copia of odd­i­ties for the Python con­nois­seur, con­tain­ing as it does one line record­ed by Ter­ry Jones, the tarred-and-feath­ered char­ac­ter who appears in Ani­ma­tions of Mor­tal­i­ty, the moun­tain in the finale of the Mean­ing of Life com­put­er game and the ani­mat­ed woman from Python who says “Turn that tele­vi­sion off–you know it’s bad for your eyes”. Most baf­fling of all is the muzak in the air­port ter­mi­nal, which is the same as used in the Den­tal sequence of the Mean­ing of Life CD-Rom near­ly thir­ty years lat­er. For sheer num­bers of Python iconog­ra­phy appear­ing in a non-Python pro­duc­tion, The Mir­a­cle of Flight’s only rival is Eric Idle’s music video for George Har­rison’s Cracker­box Palace. But I digress.

Indeed. But we enjoyed it. And you’ll enjoy The Mir­a­cle of Flight, which might more accu­rate­ly be called The Tri­umph of Grav­i­ty.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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A Brief History of John Baldessari, Narrated by Tom Waits

in Art, Film | May 17th, 2012

Tom Waits nar­rates this whim­si­cal, fast-mov­ing intro­duc­tion to the life and work of West-Coast con­cep­tu­al artist John Baldessari. The film was direct­ed by Hen­ry Joost and Ariel Schul­man, the cre­ative team behind Cat­fish and Para­nor­mal Activ­i­ty 3. It was made for the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art’s inau­gur­al Art & Film Gala, held last Novem­ber in hon­or of Baldessari and Clint East­wood. Baldessari mix­es a vari­ety of media in his art, includ­ing sculp­ture, paint­ing, print­mak­ing and video. “His work,” writes Elis­a­beth Roark of Grove Art Online, “is char­ac­ter­ized by a con­scious­ness of lan­guage evi­dent in his use of puns, seman­tics based on the struc­tural­ism of Claude Lévi-Strauss and by the incor­po­ra­tion of mate­r­i­al drawn from pop­u­lar cul­ture.” When Joost and Schul­man ask Baldessari how he will be remem­bered 100 years hence, he says dry­ly, “I’m the guy who puts dots over peo­ple’s faces.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Tom Waits Makes Com­ic Appear­ance on Fer­n­wood Tonight (1977)

Tom Waits Reads Two Charles Bukows­ki Poems, “The Laugh­ing Heart” and “Nir­vana”

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Brussels Express: The Perils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Congested City

in Film, Life | May 17th, 2012

The Bel­gians take their cycling seri­ous­ly. After all, it’s the birth­place of Eddy Mer­ckx, the five time cham­pi­on of the Tour de France. And it’s a coun­try that plays host to some of the great short races in the sport: La Flèche Wal­lonne, E3 Harel­beke, Gent–Wevelgem, and Liège–Bastogne–Liège. If you’re famil­iar with these races, you know they’re not for the faint of heart, see­ing that they some­times take rid­ers across long sec­tions of dan­ger­ous cob­ble­stones. (Get a feel for that here.) But when you watch this new doc­u­men­tary, Brus­sels Express, you start to won­der whether the real risks are not being tak­en by bike mes­sen­gers in Brus­sels, one of the most con­gest­ed cities in Europe. As David Byrne recent­ly showed us, some mod­ern cities (New York, Copen­hagen, Mod­e­na) try to make cyclists feel at home. Not so in Brus­sels. Direct­ed and shot by Sander Van­den­broucke, Brus­sels Express offers a com­men­tary on some­thing larg­er than cycling itself. It’s real­ly a tale about moder­ni­ty, the auto­mo­bile, the choic­es we make in our con­tem­po­rary, mech­a­nized lives, and their social costs. The film runs 20 min­utes, and it appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our col­lec­tion of 635 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Physics of the Bike

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

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Ken Burns on the Art of Storytelling: “It’s Lying Twenty-Four Times a Second”

in Film, History | May 17th, 2012

If you’ve nev­er watched a doc­u­men­tary by Ken Burns, maybe you just haven’t had the time. Ten hours for The Civ­il War, eigh­teen and a half for Base­ball, near­ly nine­teen for Jazz; such blocks can be dif­fi­cult to carve out, even when you’re carv­ing them out for the mas­ter audio­vi­su­al sto­ry­teller of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Burns takes on such icon­ic sub­jects, and in so doing attracts so much acclaim — includ­ing the inim­itable form of recog­ni­tion that is a spoof on The Simp­sons — that he seems like some­one whose work you should know well, even if you’ve only glimpsed it or heard it ref­er­enced. Luck­i­ly, film­mak­ers Tom Mason and Sarah Klein have put togeth­er a doc­u­men­tary of their own, one on Ken Burns, that you can watch no mat­ter how packed your sched­ule. In a mere five min­utes, Ken Burns: On Sto­ry con­veys just enough of impor­tance about Burns’ per­son­al­i­ty, work­ing prin­ci­ples, and world­view that it may leave you feel­ing like you have no choice but to dive into his fil­mog­ra­phy imme­di­ate­ly.

Of course, this all depends on how you feel about sto­ry­telling. In explain­ing his own view on film­mak­ing, Burns rolls out that old quote from Jean Luc-Godard, “Cin­e­ma is truth at twen­ty-four frames a sec­ond.” But he has his own response to the famous procla­ma­tion: “Maybe. It’s lying twen­ty-four times a sec­ond, too. All the time. All sto­ry is manip­u­la­tion.” With as much vehe­mence as Godard has aired his griev­ances about how the forces of sto­ry, plot, and nar­ra­tive hope­less­ly and per­verse­ly dis­tort artis­tic truth, Burns declares his accep­tance and even admi­ra­tion of that ele­ment of sto­ry­telling. To him, craft­ing a prop­er sto­ry requires manip­u­la­tion, but he does­n’t con­sid­er all manip­u­la­tive tech­niques equal. “Is there accept­able manip­u­la­tion? You bet,” he declares. “Peo­ple say, ‘Oh boy, I was so moved to tears by your film.’ That’s a good thing? I manip­u­lat­ed that!” And even if you feel you have no stake in mat­ters of sto­ry, truth, and manip­u­la­tion, keep watch­ing; Mason and Klein even­tu­al­ly get Burns talk­ing about some­thing that would fas­ci­nate any­one: his desire to “wake the dead.”

(See also the Atlantic’s inter­view with Mason and Klein about the mak­ing of Ken Burns: On Sto­ry.)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Freddie Mercury: The Untold Story of the Singer’s Journey From Zanzibar to Stardom

in Film, Music | May 15th, 2012

How to explain a per­former like Fred­die Mer­cury? First you’d have to describe, in con­ven­tion­al terms, the thor­ough­ly uncon­ven­tion­al musi­cal per­sona he devel­oped as the front­man of the glam rock band Queen. Then you’d have to explain how he got there from his birth as Far­rokh Bol­sara, his child­hood in Zanz­ibar — yes, Zanz­ibar — and his school­ing in the strict, tra­di­tion­al British Indi­an envi­ron­ment of St. Peter’s Board­ing School. In 2000’s Fred­die Mer­cury: The Untold Sto­ry, direc­tors Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossach­er attempt just this, talk­ing to those who knew Mer­cury well in the many ways one could know him: fam­i­ly mem­bers, teach­ers, col­lab­o­ra­tors, lovers. This in addi­tion to dozens of brief, high­ly admir­ing com­ments from Mer­cury’s famous col­leagues in both rock and flam­boy­ance: Phil Collins, Mick Jag­ger, Elton John, Liza Min­nel­li.

By 2000, Mer­cury had already been dead of AIDS for near­ly a decade. At the time he acquired it, the dis­ease remained poor­ly under­stood, and any­one liv­ing as far out on the social, phys­i­cal, and sex­u­al edge as he did must have run a great risk of it. But the provoca­tive, uncom­pro­mis­ing Fred­die Mer­cury of The Untold Sto­ry could nev­er have exist­ed with­out great risk, espe­cial­ly of the aes­thet­ic and per­for­ma­tive vari­eties. The film spends time gaz­ing upon the draw­ings the young Fred Bol­sara, as he was then known, made as a visu­al art stu­dent. Who could resist think­ing of him as a kind of a visu­al artist all his life, one who craft­ed the image of Fred­die Mer­cury, embod­ied this image, and ulti­mate­ly became it? Only a man dar­ing enough to cre­ate him­self, after all, could pos­si­bly have been dar­ing enough to stage the Felli­ni-esque birth­day par­ty we see pieces of and hear hazi­ly remem­bered. Who among us feels bold enough to cel­e­brate our own 39th with dwarfs cov­ered in liv­er?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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True Story: The Time Pixar Almost Deleted Toy Story 2

in Animation, Film | May 15th, 2012

Dur­ing the late 1980s, two short films — Luxo Jr. and Tin Toy — saved Pixar from bank­rupt­cy. Dur­ing the late 1990s, anoth­er film, Toy Sto­ry 2, almost cre­at­ed a finan­cial cat­a­stro­phe for the com­pa­ny. In this clip excerpt­ed from the Blu-ray ver­sion of the film, Oren Jacob (for­mer CTO of Pixar) and Galyn Sus­man (Pixar pro­duc­er) remem­ber the time when Toy Sto­ry 2 near­ly became the vic­tim of the com­put­ers that gen­er­at­ed it. One com­mand — RM* — almost delet­ed an award-win­ning film that went on to make $485 mil­lion at the box office.

via Kot­tke

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Headbanging Anthropologist Takes Us Through the World of Heavy Metal in 2005 Documentary

in Film, Music | May 14th, 2012

Don’t wor­ry; I don’t know any­thing about met­al either. As least, I did­n’t know any­thing about it before I watched Met­al: A Head­banger’s Jour­ney, a 2005  doc­u­men­tary on this vast yet much-derid­ed musi­cal sub­cul­ture that you can watch on YouTube. Sam Dunn, an anthro­pol­o­gist, bassist, and unapolo­getic met­al­head, uses the film to ask many ques­tion about his favorite music: what exact­ly is met­al? How do met­al play­ers get it to sound so evil? Why does one per­son give him­self over com­plete­ly to the met­al lifestyle, while anoth­er bare­ly notices its exis­tence at all? What feel­ing do the most die-hard fans get from met­al, and how do they get addict­ed to it? Why does met­al’s most­ly straight male audi­ence thrill to the sight of met­al’s most­ly straight male per­form­ers strut­ting around in tight leather? How did met­al grow so many sub­gen­res — black met­al, glam met­al, pow­er met­al, death met­al? Does Satan real­ly have any­thing to do with met­al, or does it all come down to a big piece of Hal­loween-ish the­ater? And how come north­ern Euro­peans take met­al so dead­ly seri­ous­ly?

In pur­suit of the answers, Dunn trav­els the world inter­view­ing met­al­ists of every stripe, from Rob Zom­bie to Alice Coop­er to Rush bassist Ged­dy Lee to Twist­ed Sis­ter front­man Dee Snider to Iron Maid­en’s mul­ti­tal­ent­ed Rob Dick­in­son to a pair of masked men from Slip­knot. He even talks twice to the late Ron­nie James Dio, the singer who sup­pos­ed­ly pop­u­lar­ized the now-uni­ver­sal sign of the horns met­al hand ges­ture. Seek­ing con­text for these first-hand accounts, Dunn talks to aca­d­e­m­ic soci­ol­o­gists and musi­col­o­gists as well as the mile-a-minute cul­tur­al essay­ist Chuck Kloster­man. Fol­low­ing his anthro­po­log­i­cal instinct, he also puts in a great deal of time with fel­low met­al­heads of myr­i­ad ages and nation­al­i­ties (though they usu­al­ly come from the same range of grim­ly dull child­hoods). Dun­n’s dis­arm­ing per­son­al­i­ty and undy­ing enthu­si­asm for the mate­r­i­al offer a way into this seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry musi­cal cul­ture of vir­tu­os­i­ty and bru­tal­i­ty, whose cre­ators sing in death grows yet speak elo­quent­ly, whose hard­ened out­sider fol­low­ers some­how find in it a fount of com­mu­ni­ty, friend­ship and belong­ing.

via Metafil­ter

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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