David Byrne Explains How the “Big Suit” He Wore in Stop Making Sense Was Inspired by Japanese Kabuki Theatre

in Fashion, Film, Music | March 30th, 2023

In the nine­teen-sev­en­ties and eight­ies, the name of David Byrne’s band was Talk­ing Heads — as the title of their 1982 live album per­pet­u­al­ly reminds us. But their over­all artis­tic project arguably had less to do with the head than the body, a propo­si­tion mem­o­rably under­scored in Stop Mak­ing Sense, the Jonathan Demme-direct­ed con­cert film that came out two years lat­er. “Music is very phys­i­cal and often the body under­stands it before the head,” Byrne says in a bizarre con­tem­po­rary self-inter­view pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. To make that fact vis­i­ble onstage, “I want­ed my head to appear small­er, and the eas­i­est way to do that was to make my body big­ger.”

Hence cos­tume design­er Gail Black­er’s cre­ation of what Talk­ing Heads fans have long referred to as the “big suit.” Byrne has always been will­ing dis­cuss its ori­gins, which he traces back to a trip to Japan. There, as he put it to Enter­tain­ment Week­ly in 2012, he’d “seen a lot of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese the­ater, and I real­ized that yes, that kind of front-fac­ing out­line, a suit, a businessman’s suit, looked like one of those things, a rec­tan­gle with just a head on top.”

A friend of his, the fash­ion design­er Jur­gen Lehl, said that “every­thing is big­ger on stage.” “He was refer­ring to, I think, ges­tures and the way you walk and what not,” Byrne told David Let­ter­man in 1984. But he took it lit­er­al­ly, think­ing, “Well, that solves my cos­tume prob­lem right there.”

Though Byrne only wore the big suit for one num­ber, “Girl­friend Is Bet­ter” (from whose lyrics Stop Mak­ing Sense takes its title), it became the acclaimed film’s sin­gle most icon­ic ele­ment, ref­er­enced even in chil­dren’s car­toons. New York­er crit­ic Pauline Kael called it “a per­fect psy­cho­log­i­cal fit,” remark­ing that “when he dances, it isn’t as if he were mov­ing the suit — the suit seems to move him.” The asso­ci­a­tion has­n’t been with­out its frus­tra­tions; he once spec­u­lat­ed that his tomb­stone would be inscribed with the phrase “Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?” But now that Stop Mak­ing Sense is return­ing to the­aters in a new 4K restora­tion, near­ly 40 years after its first release, he’s accept­ed that the time has final­ly come to pick it up from the clean­er’s. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it still fits.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Talk­ing Heads: How the Band Went from Scrap­py CBGB’s Punks to New Wave Super­stars

An Intro­duc­tion to Japan­ese Kabu­ki The­atre, Fea­tur­ing 20th-Cen­tu­ry Mas­ters of the Form (1964)

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

Japan­ese Kabu­ki Actors Cap­tured in 18th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints by the Mys­te­ri­ous & Mas­ter­ful Artist Sharaku

How Jonathan Demme Put Human­i­ty Into His Films: From The Silence of the Lambs to Stop Mak­ing Sense

Talk­ing Heads Live in Rome, 1980: The Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

The Complete “Everything is a Remix”: An Hour-Long Testament to the Brilliance & Beauty of Human Creativity

in Creativity, Film, Music | March 30th, 2023

Let me quote myself: “From 2010 to 2012, film­mak­er Kir­by Fer­gu­son released Every­thing is a Remix, a four-part series that explored art and cre­ativ­i­ty, and par­tic­u­lar­ly how artists inevitably bor­row from one anoth­er, draw on past ideas and con­ven­tions, and then turn these mate­ri­als into some­thing beau­ti­ful and new. In the ini­tial series, Fer­gu­son focused on musi­cians, film­mak­ers, writ­ers and even video game mak­ers. Now, a lit­tle more than a decade lat­er, Fer­gu­son has resur­faced and released a fifth and final chap­ter in his series, with this episode focus­ing on a dif­fer­ent kind of artist: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.” Above, you can watch the com­plete edi­tion of “Every­thing is a Remix,” with all parts com­bined into a sin­gle, hour-long video. A tran­script of the entire pro­duc­tion can be found here. Watch. Pon­der. Cre­ate.

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 

The Long Game of Cre­ativ­i­ty: If You Haven’t Cre­at­ed a Mas­ter­piece at 30, You’re Not a Fail­ure

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi Explains Why the Source of Hap­pi­ness Lies in Cre­ativ­i­ty and Flow, Not Mon­ey

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch the World’s First Film Made in Babylonian, the Language of Ancient Mesopotamia

in Film, History, Language | March 29th, 2023

“Enable sub­ti­tles,” says the noti­fi­ca­tion that appears before The Poor Man of Nip­pur — and you will need them, unless, of course, you hap­pen to hail from the cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion. The short film is adapt­ed from “a folk­tale based on a 2,700-year-old poem about a pau­per,” says the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge’s alum­ni news, act­ed out word-for-word by “Assyri­ol­o­gy stu­dents and oth­er mem­bers of the Mesopotami­an com­mu­ni­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty.” The result qual­i­fies as the world’s very first film in Baby­lon­ian, a lan­guage that has “been silent for 2,000 years.”

“Found on a clay tablet at the archae­o­log­i­cal site of Sul­tan­te­pe, in south-east Turkey,” the sto­ry of The Poor Man of Nip­pur has­n’t come down to us in per­fect­ly com­plete form. The film rep­re­sents the points of break­age in the tablet with VHS-style glitch­es, a neat par­al­lel of forms of media degra­da­tion across the mil­len­nia.

That isn’t the only notice­able anachro­nism — tak­ing the build­ings of Cam­bridge for Mesopotamia in the sev­enth cen­tu­ry BC demands a cer­tain sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief — but we can rest assured of the Baby­lon­ian dia­logue’s his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy, or at least that this is the most accu­rate Baby­lon­ian dia­logue we’re like­ly to get.

Accord­ing to Cam­bridge Assyri­ol­o­gist Mar­tin Wor­thing­ton, who over­saw the Poor Man of Nip­pur project (after serv­ing as Baby­lon­ian con­sul­tant for The Eter­nals), deter­min­ing its pro­nun­ci­a­tion involves “a mix of edu­cat­ed guess­work and care­ful recon­struc­tion,” but one that ben­e­fits from exist­ing “tran­scrip­tions into the Greek alpha­bet” as well as con­nec­tions with sta­bler lan­guages like Ara­bic and Hebrew. The result is an unprece­dent­ed his­tor­i­cal-lin­guis­tic attrac­tion, a com­pelling adver­tise­ment for the study of Baby­lon­ian at Cam­bridge, and also — in depict­ing the impov­er­ished pro­tag­o­nist’s revenge on a thug­gish town may­or — a demon­stra­tion that the under­dog sto­ry tran­scends time, cul­ture, and lan­guage.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Lis­ten to The Epic of Gil­gamesh Being Read in its Orig­i­nal Ancient Lan­guage, Akka­di­an

Watch a 4000-Year Old Baby­lon­ian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Har­vard

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Trigonom­e­try Dis­cov­ered on a 3700-Year-Old Ancient Baby­lon­ian Tablet

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Amélie Was Really a KGB Spy: Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet Re-Edits His Beloved Film, Amélie, into a New Comedic Short

in Film | March 21st, 2023

No French film of this cen­tu­ry is more beloved than Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie. Or rather, no pro­tag­o­nist of a French film in this cen­tu­ry is more beloved than Audrey Tautou’s epony­mous Amélie. Hence, no doubt, why the movie is best known by that short ver­sion of its title rather than by the long ver­sion, Le fab­uleux des­tin d’Amélie Poulain. Now, more than twen­ty years after the release of Le fab­uleux des­tin d’Amélie Poulain, Jeunet has fol­lowed it up with La véri­ta­ble his­toire d’Amélie Poulain, which you can watch (with option­al French or Eng­lish sub­ti­tles) just above.

“After all this time,” Jeunet says in a brief intro­duc­tion, “I felt the moment was right to tell you, at long last, the real sto­ry of Amélie Poulain.” She turns out, accord­ing to his voice-over nar­ra­tion that fol­lows, not to be a sim­ple Mont­martre wait­ress who ded­i­cates her­self to sur­rep­ti­tious­ly enrich­ing the lives of those around her.

In fact she works as a spy for the KGB, hav­ing first been recruit­ed in child­hood with the promise of can­dy bars. That may sound far-fetched, but Jeunet sup­ports every detail of Amélie’s dou­ble life, and of the sto­ry of her re-entry into espi­onage after the fall of the Berlin Wall, using the very same scenes and involv­ing the very same char­ac­ters we remem­ber from Amélie.

On one lev­el, La véri­ta­ble his­toire d’Amélie Poulain tes­ti­fies to the endur­ing play­ful­ness that keeps Jeunet from tak­ing his own work — even the work that became a glob­al phe­nom­e­non — too seri­ous­ly. (Indeed, that spir­it is on dis­play in the orig­i­nal movie’s exag­ger­a­tion of whim­si­cal-French-film tropes.) Much like the Hol­ly­wood­i­fied Kubrick trail­ers we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, this new short also con­sti­tutes a demon­stra­tion of how the mean­ing and impact of cin­e­ma are cre­at­ed not by the images them­selves, but rather by their con­text and jux­ta­po­si­tion. And so, with char­ac­ter­is­tic clev­er­ness, Jeunet has rein­vent­ed Amélie as a Sovi­et agent by employ­ing the prin­ci­ples of Sovi­et mon­tage.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Paris Through Pen­tax: Short Film Lets You See a Great City Through a Dif­fer­ent Lens

Tui­leries: The Coen Broth­ers’ Short Film About Steve Buscemi’s Very Bad Day in the Paris Metro

A Cin­e­mat­ic Jour­ney Through Paris, As Seen Through the Lens of Leg­endary Film­mak­er Éric Rohmer: Watch Rohmer in Paris

How to Jump the Paris Metro: A Wit­ty, Rebel­lious Primer from New Wave Direc­tor Luc Moul­let (1984)

His­to­ry Declas­si­fied: New Archive Reveals Once-Secret Doc­u­ments from World Gov­ern­ments

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Essential Japanese Cinema: A Journey Through 50 of Japan’s Beautiful, Often Bizarre Films

in Film | March 8th, 2023

In 2018, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. The award itself came as less of a sur­prise than did the fact that Shoplifters was the first of Kore-eda’s films to win it, giv­en how long he’d been the most wide­ly acclaimed Japan­ese film­mak­er alive. And though it had been more than twen­ty years since the Palme last went to a Japan­ese movie — Shomei Ima­mu­ra’s The Eel, in 1997 — Japan had long since estab­lished itself at Cannes as the Asian coun­try to beat. Ima­mu­ra’s The Bal­lad of Naraya­ma had won the Palme in 1983, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Kage­musha in 1980, and Teinosuke Kin­u­gasa’s Gate of Hell in 1954, when West­ern cinephiles were only just start­ing to appre­ci­ate Japan­ese cin­e­ma.

Why has that appre­ci­a­tion proven so endur­ing? This is one ques­tion inves­ti­gat­ed by “The Essen­tial Japan­ese Cin­e­ma,” a video essay from The Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy. Nar­ra­tor Luiza Liz Bond empha­sized the “height­ened aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty” of Japan­ese film­mak­ers, on dis­play in “the ten­der obser­va­tion of Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry, the poet­ic rhap­sody of Kuro­sawa’s Dreams, the har­row­ing fem­i­nine gaze of Video­pho­bia.” But one can find exam­ples just as rich and even more var­i­ous in less­er-known films from Japan such as Shūji Ter­aya­ma’s engagé exper­i­men­tal dra­ma Throw Away Your Books, Ral­ly in the Streets, Kaizō Hayashi’s oneir­ic silent-film pas­tiche To Sleep as to Dream, and Gakuryū Ishi­i’s sub­tly psy­che­del­ic and sci­ence-fic­tion­al com­ing-of-age tale August in the Water.

The video orga­nizes these films and many oth­ers under a rubric of philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts drawn from Japan­ese cul­ture. These include bushidō, the code of the samu­rai West­ern­ers came to know through the pic­tures of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Masa­ki Kobayashi; wabi-sabi, an ide­al of beau­ty cen­tered on imper­fect things; mono no aware, a sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the tran­sient and the ephemer­al; and guro, which push­es the unset­tling to its out­er lim­its. Their height­ened aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty “grants Japan­ese film­mak­ers the abil­i­ty to be fine-tuned to the grotesque and the grue­some,” Bond notes. They under­stand that we all enjoy beau­ty, but an appre­ci­a­tion of ugli­ness is nec­es­sary to mag­ni­fy this process. The beau­ty and the ugly are not oppo­sites, but dif­fer­ent aspects of the same thing.”

Of course, one need not be famil­iar with these ideas in order to enjoy Japan­ese cin­e­ma. The tex­ture-inten­sive eroti­cism of Hiroshi Teshi­ga­hara’s Woman in the Dunes, the junk­yard body hor­ror of Shinya Tsukamo­to’s Tet­suo: The Iron Man, the relent­less­ly bizarre inven­tive­ness of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House: these could only be deliv­ered by film­mak­ers who under­stand first that they work in a medi­um of vis­cer­al pow­er. Even the work of Yasu­jirō Ozu, famed for its imper­turbable restraint, res­onates more deeply than ever with us six decades after his death. “It is impos­si­ble to speak of the sub­lime with­out speak­ing of his por­tray­al of human fragili­ty,” says Bond. “Ozu is nev­er too sen­ti­men­tal, nev­er too orna­men­tal.” Would that more mod­ern-day film­mak­ers, from Japan or any­where else, looked to his exam­ple.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Did Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Make Such Pow­er­ful & Endur­ing Films? A Wealth of Video Essays Break Down His Cin­e­mat­ic Genius

How One Sim­ple Cut Reveals the Cin­e­mat­ic Genius of Yasu­jirō Ozu

Hayao Miyaza­ki Meets Aki­ra Kuro­sawa: Watch the Titans of Japan­ese Film in Con­ver­sa­tion (1993)

How Mas­ter Japan­ese Ani­ma­tor Satoshi Kon Pushed the Bound­aries of Mak­ing Ani­me: A Video Essay

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

A Page of Mad­ness: The Lost Avant Garde Mas­ter­piece from Ear­ly Japan­ese Cin­e­ma (1926)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

A Street Musician Plays Pink Floyd’s “Time” in Front of the 1,900-Year-Old Pantheon in Rome

in Film, Music | March 3rd, 2023

To com­mem­o­rate the 50th anniver­sary of Pink Floy­d’s Dark Side of the Moon we bring you this: a busker fit­ting­ly play­ing “Time” in front of the near­ly 2000-year-old Pan­theon in Rome. That the police try to break up the show hard­ly mat­ters. The busker con­tin­ues, and returns on oth­er days to play “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond” and “Com­fort­ably Numb.” If you’re a Pink Floyd fan, this scene may call to mind Pink Floyd: Live at Pom­peii, the 1972 con­cert doc­u­men­tary that fea­tured the band play­ing eight songs amidst the ruins of Pom­peii. Rock among the rocks. You can explore that scene here.

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 

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live Amidst the Ruins of Pom­peii in 1971 … and David Gilmour Does It Again in 2016

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Mas­sive Float­ing Stage in 1989; Forces the May­or & City Coun­cil to Resign

David Gilmour Invites a Street Per­former to Play Wine Glass­es Onstage With Him In Venice: Hear Them Play “Shine On You Crazy Dia­mond”

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon Turns 50: Hear It Get Psy­cho­an­a­lyzed by Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How One Man Keeps Showing Films in a Japanese Cinema That Closed 58 Years Ago: A Moving, Short Documentary

in Film, Travel | February 24th, 2023

Since at least the nine­teen-fifties, when tele­vi­sion own­er­ship began spread­ing rapid­ly across the devel­oped world, movie the­aters have been labor­ing under one kind of exis­ten­tial threat or anoth­er. Yet despite their appar­ent vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to a vari­ety of dis­rup­tive devel­op­ments — home video, stream­ing, COVID-19 — many, if not most, of them have found ways to sol­dier on. In some cas­es this owes to the ded­i­ca­tion of small groups of sup­port­ers, or even to the efforts of indi­vid­u­als like Shu­ji Tamu­ra, who oper­ates the cen­tu­ry-old Motomiya Movie The­ater in Japan’s Fukushi­ma pre­fec­ture sin­gle-hand­ed­ly.

You can see Tamu­ra in action in My The­ater, the five-minute doc­u­men­tary short above. “The Japan­ese direc­tor Kazuya Ashizawa’s charm­ing obser­va­tion­al por­trait cap­tures Tamu­ra as he screens old movies for an audi­ence of stu­dents and cinephiles, and gives behind-the-scenes tours of the cin­e­ma,” says Aeon. Those tours include an up-close look at the thor­ough­ly ana­log film pro­jec­tor of whose oper­a­tion Tamu­ra, 81 years old at the time of film­ing, has retained all the know-how. Though he offi­cial­ly closed the the­ater in the nine­teen-six­ties, it seems he keeps his thread­ing skills sharp by hold­ing screen­ings for tour groups young and old.

Though light­heart­ed, a por­trait like this could hard­ly avoid an ele­giac under­tone. Already suf­fer­ing from the depop­u­la­tion that has afflict­ed many regions of Japan, Fukushi­ma was also bad­ly afflict­ed by the 2011 Tōhoku earth­quake and tsuna­mi and their asso­ci­at­ed nuclear dis­as­ter. In 2020, the year after Ashiza­wa shot My The­ater, a typhoon “caused the Abuku­ma­gawa riv­er and its trib­u­taries to flood,” as the Asahi Shim­bun’s Shoko Riki­maru writes. “The Motomiya city cen­ter was inun­dat­ed, sev­en peo­ple died, and more than 2,000 hous­es and build­ings were dam­aged.” Both Tamu­ra’s the­ater and his home were flood­ed, and “half of the 400 film cans on shelves on the first floor of his house were drenched in mud­dy water.”

In response, help came from near and far. “A man­u­fac­tur­er in Kana­gawa Pre­fec­ture sent 10 box­es of film cans to the the­ater, while a movie the­ater in Morio­ka, Iwate Pre­fec­ture, deliv­ered a film-edit­ing machine. About 30 peo­ple affil­i­at­ed with the film indus­try in Tokyo showed up at the the­ater to help clean and dry the film. The effort led to the restora­tion of about 100 films.” Alas, Tamu­ra’s planned re-open­ing event hap­pened to coin­cide with the spread of the coro­n­avirus across Japan, result­ing in its indef­i­nite post­pone­ment. But now that Japan has re-opened for inter­na­tion­al tourism, per­haps the  Motomiya Movie The­ater can become a des­ti­na­tion for not just domes­tic vis­i­tors but for­eign ones as well. Hav­ing been charmed by My The­ater, who would­n’t want to make the trip?

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Japan Has the Old­est Busi­ness­es in the World?: Hōshi, a 1300-Year-Old Hotel, Offers Clues

A Med­i­ta­tive Look at a Japan­ese Artisan’s Quest to Save the Bril­liant, For­got­ten Col­ors of Japan’s Past

Dis­cov­er the Ghost Towns of Japan: Where Scare­crows Replace Peo­ple, and a Man Lives in an Aban­doned Ele­men­tary School Gym

The Sto­ry of Akiko Takaku­ra, One of the Last Sur­vivors of the Hiroshi­ma Bomb­ing, Told in a Short Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Art of Making Movie Trailers: A Longtime Movie Trailer Editor Breaks Down Classic Previews for Dr. Strangelove, Carrie, and Others

in Film | February 23rd, 2023

No art form is as sub­ject to trend and fash­ion as the Hol­ly­wood film — except, per­haps, the Hol­ly­wood trail­er. If you came of age as a movie­go­er in the nine­teen-nineties, as I did, you’ll remem­ber hear­ing hun­dreds of grav­el­ly-voiced promis­es of trans­porta­tion to “a world where the sun burns cold, and the wind blows cold­er”; to “a world where great risks can bring extra­or­di­nary rewards”; to “a world where dream­ers and believ­ers are mirac­u­lous­ly trans­formed into heav­en­ly crea­tures.” Prac­ti­cal­ly all of these  lines were deliv­ered by voice-over artist Don LaFontaine; when he died in 2008, the “in a world…” trail­er went with him.

LaFontaine gets his due in the Vox video at the top of the post, which exam­ines the art of the movie trail­er through the eyes of edi­tor Bill Neil. Neil’s own résumé includes the trail­ers for mod­ern entries in var­i­ous hor­ror fran­chis­es, like remakes of The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre and The Ami­tyville Hor­ror, as well as the 2018 Hal­loween.

This placed him well to cut one togeth­er for Nope by Jor­dan Peele, an auteur keen on putting old tropes of genre film to new ends. The project gave Neil a chance to exer­cise his own retro-repur­pos­ing instinct, and here he lays out a few of the sources — Car­pen­ter’s The Fog, Steven Spiel­berg’s Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind — to which he paid homage while fill­ing the trail­er with intrigue.

With Nope, as with most every film, Neil made its trail­er with­out see­ing the fin­ished prod­uct. Rather, he had to work with raw footage as it was being shot, which results in vis­i­ble dif­fer­ences between the images in the trail­er and those in the actu­al movie. (In some cas­es, scenes excerpt­ed in a trail­er end up cut out entire­ly.) Such restric­tions have a way of inspir­ing edi­tors to come up with new tech­niques, some of which become high­ly influ­en­tial: in the video, Neil high­lights the fea­tures of clas­sic trail­ers for pic­tures like Dr. Strangelove, Car­rie, and Alien, iden­ti­fy­ing the most endur­ing ele­ments of their lega­cy in his craft.

When those movies came out in the nine­teen-six­ties, sev­en­ties, and ear­ly eight­ies, most trail­ers were seen in one place: the movie the­ater. (And in those days, as Neil notes, trail­ers were made not by spe­cial­ized pro­duc­tion hous­es, but employ­ees in the stu­dio or even the film­mak­ers them­selves.) Then came the home-video era, which chal­lenged edi­tors with defeat­ing the view­er’s instinct to hit fast-for­ward. Today, trail­ers reflect the dom­i­nance of what Neil calls the “bumper,” a flash of max­i­mum excite­ment in the first few sec­onds that sug­gests “it’s gonna get crazy by the end” — on the the­o­ry that, because you’re prob­a­bly watch­ing on Youtube, you won’t hes­i­tate to click that skip but­ton oth­er­wise.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Lan­dis Decon­structs Trail­ers of Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Films: Cit­i­zen Kane, Sun­set Boule­vard, 2001 & More

Com­pare the Orig­i­nal Trail­ers of Clas­sic Films with Their Mod­ern Updates: Casablan­ca, Dog Day After­noon & The Exor­cist

Watch 25 Alfred Hitch­cock Trail­ers, Excit­ing Films in Their Own Right

Watch the 7 Hour Trail­er for the 720 Hour Film, Ambiancé, the Longest Movie in His­to­ry

The Creepy 13th-Cen­tu­ry Melody That Shows Up in Movies Again & Again: An Intro­duc­tion to “Dies Irae”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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