How Radiohead Wrote the Perfect James Bond Theme Song

in Film, Music | October 22nd, 2021

Over the past 59 years, the duty of per­form­ing a James Bond movie theme has fall­en to the likes of Tom Jones, Paul McCart­ney, Car­ly Simon, Bono, Madon­na — and most recent­ly, for the lat­est install­ment, No Time to Die, Bil­lie Eil­ish. But one of the great­est Bond themes ever writ­ten has nev­er been heard in any of the movies. This, in any case, is the con­tention of the video essay above, “How Radio­head Wrote the Per­fect Bond Theme.” Com­mis­sioned for 2015’s Spec­tre, the sec­ond-most recent film in the series, Thom Yorke and com­pa­ny came up with a song that moves Lis­ten­ing In cre­ator Barn­a­by Mar­tin to declare, “This is Bond, but it’s also unmis­tak­ably Radio­head.”

Like many Bond title themes, Radio­head­’s “Spec­tre” is in a minor key with “added blues notes,” work­ing off the dis­tinc­tive chord pro­gres­sion com­pos­er John Bar­ry employed in the series’ orig­i­nal instru­men­tal theme. And while, like most Bond title-theme per­form­ers, Radio­head are pop­u­lar musi­cians, their actu­al work has always refused to align per­fect­ly with straight­for­ward pop-music expec­ta­tions.

“Spec­tre” embod­ies both the band’s “love of rhyth­mi­cal ambi­gu­i­ty” and their “trade­mark har­mon­ic ambi­gu­i­ty.” The “beau­ty and sim­plic­i­ty of the music con­trast painful­ly with the words,” reflect­ing “per­fect­ly that dichoto­my in con­tem­po­rary Bond: a man strug­gling to rec­on­cile love and duty.”

As if that weren’t enough, Radio­head­’s song also includes unex­pect­ed but con­sum­mate­ly Bond-esque com­po­si­tion­al and instru­men­tal moves. “It’s jazzy but dis­cor­dant,” says Mar­tin. “It’s a mod­ern re-imag­in­ing of John Bar­ry’s big-band orches­tra­tions.” In every sec­tion the piece exquis­ite­ly main­tains the ten­sion between Radio­head and Bond, cre­at­ing “an instant­ly com­pelling and dark musi­cal world. Alas, it was ulti­mate­ly replaced, osten­si­bly because the mood of the music and lyrics did­n’t fit prop­er­ly with that of the film: “We had this beau­ti­ful song,” lament­ed direc­tor Sam Mendes, “and we weren’t able to use it.” But that has­n’t stopped Bond afi­ciona­dos from imag­in­ing what could have been, and you can get a sense of it in a fan video, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, that reunites “Spec­tre” with Spec­tre.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radiohead’s “Spec­tre” Played Against the Title Sequence of the 2015 James Bond Film, Spec­tre

Intro­duc­ing The Radio­head Pub­lic Library: Radio­head Makes Their Full Cat­a­logue Avail­able via a Free Online Web Site

James Bond: 50 Years in Film (and a Big Blu-Ray Release)

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Per­forms Songs from His New Sound­track for the Hor­ror Film, Sus­piria

The Secret Rhythm Behind Radiohead’s “Video­tape” Now Final­ly Revealed

Inti­mate Live Per­for­mances of Radio­head, Son­ic Youth, the White Stripes, PJ Har­vey & More: No Host, No Audi­ence, Just Pure Live Music

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.

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When Salvador Dali Viewed Joseph Cornell’s Surrealist Film, Became Enraged & Shouted: “He Stole It from My Subconscious!” (1936)

in Art, Film | October 20th, 2021

Did Sal­vador Dalí meet the diag­nos­tic cri­te­ria for a per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der and maybe, also, a form of psy­chosis, as some have alleged? Maybe, but there’s no real way to know. “You can’t diag­nose psy­chi­atric ill­ness­es with­out doing a face to face psy­chi­atric exam­i­na­tion,” Dutch psy­chi­a­trist Wal­ter van den Broek writes, and it’s pos­si­ble Dali “con­scious­ly cre­at­ed an ‘artis­tic’ per­son­al­i­ty… for the mon­ey or in order to suc­ceed.” No doubt Dalí was a tire­less self-pro­mot­er who mar­ket­ed his work by way of a sen­sa­tion­al­ist per­sona.

But maybe Dalí faked symp­toms of men­tal ill­ness (via his under­stand­ing of Freud) in order to delib­er­ate­ly induce states of psy­chosis as part of his para­noid-crit­i­cal method, a “spon­ta­neous method of irra­tional knowl­edge based on the crit­i­cal and sys­tem­at­ic objec­tiv­i­ty of the asso­ci­a­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions of deliri­ous phe­nom­e­na,” he wrote. One of Dalí’s extreme “unortho­dox meth­ods for idea gen­er­a­tion,” the prac­tice of pre­tend­ing to be insane may have dri­ven Dalí to believe too strong­ly in his own delu­sions at times.

Through­out the ear­ly 1930s, Dalí cham­pi­oned para­noia, “a form of men­tal ill­ness in which real­i­ty is orga­nized in such a man­ner so as to be served through the con­trol of an imag­i­na­tive con­struc­tion,” he said in a 1930 lec­ture. “The para­noiac who thinks he is being poi­soned dis­cov­ers in all the things that sur­round him, down to their most imper­cep­ti­ble and sub­tle details, prepa­ra­tions for his death.” And the para­noiac Sur­re­al­ist who believes he’s being robbed of his ideas may see artis­tic theft every­where — espe­cial­ly in an exhib­it of Sur­re­al­ist artists that does not include him. (After all, as Dalí once declared, “I am Sur­re­al­ism.”)

In 1936, Dalí attend­ed a screen­ing of Joseph Cor­nel­l’s short Sur­re­al­ist film Rose Hobart (top), named for the obscure silent actress whose scenes Cor­nell excised from a “1931 jun­gle adven­ture film” called East of Bor­neo. Cor­nell took the footage, slowed it down, “chopped it up, reordered it, and dis­card­ed the entire plot,” writes Cather­ine Cor­man. “He cut out reac­tion shots… removed overt­ly upset­ting scenes,” edit­ed in scenes from oth­er films, and “made the film seem delib­er­ate­ly mod­est and worn,” pro­ject­ing it through a blue fil­ter and scor­ing it with two songs from Nestor Ama­r­al’s album Hol­i­day in Brazil (which he’d found at a junk shop).

The screen­ing hap­pened to be held in New York at the same time as the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s first exhib­it of Sur­re­al­ist art, an exhi­bi­tion “rife with con­tro­ver­sy,” MoMA writes, that “pro­voked fierce reac­tions from bat­tle fac­tions among the Dadaists and the Sur­re­al­ists.” French Sur­re­al­ist poet and crit­ic André Bre­ton, who two years ear­li­er expelled Dalí from the Sur­re­al­ist group for “the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Hit­ler­ian fas­cism,” wrote the cat­a­logue intro­duc­tion. The Span­ish Civ­il War had just bro­ken out that year, fur­ther aggra­vat­ing Dalí, no doubt, when he encoun­tered Cor­nel­l’s film at a mati­nee screen­ing.

Part­way through the screen­ing of Rose Hobart, Dalí became enraged, stood up, shout­ing in Span­ish, and over­turned the pro­jec­tor. Lat­er, he report­ed­ly told Julian Levy, whose gallery held the screen­ing: “My idea for a film is exact­ly that, and I was going to pro­pose it to some­one who would pay to have it made.… I nev­er wrote it or told any­one, but it is as if [Cor­nell] had stolen it.” Oth­er ver­sions of the sto­ry had Dalí say­ing, “He stole it from my sub­con­scious!” or “He stole my dreams!” Cor­nell had not, of course, reached into Dalí’s sub­con­scious but had man­i­fest­ed the film from his own obses­sions with silent film and Hol­ly­wood divas, themes that run through­out his work. After Dalí’s out­burst, the shy, reclu­sive artist refused to screen Rose Hobart again until the 1960s.

Dalí had van­quished an imag­i­nary rival, but per­haps his true tar­gets — Bre­ton and his for­mer Sur­re­al­ist col­leagues — remained untouched. It would not mat­ter: Dalí eclipsed them all in fame, espe­cial­ly in the age of tele­vi­sion, which embraced the artist’s antics like no oth­er medi­um. But through his per­for­mances of insan­i­ty, maybe Dalí actu­al­ly did touch into a cre­ative pre­con­scious state shared among artists — a place in which Joseph Cor­nell just might have found and stolen his ideas.

In 1932, Dalí had an epiphany about Jean-Fran­cois Mil­let’s The Angelus, a paint­ing with which he’d been obsessed since child­hood and that influ­enced him heav­i­ly as an adult, becom­ing a key source for his para­noid-crit­i­cal method. Dalí claimed that the two farm­ers pray­ing over a mea­ger har­vest were actu­al­ly mourn­ing a lost child. He per­sist­ed in this belief until the Lou­vre agreed to X‑ray the paint­ing. Under­neath, they found a small, child-sized cof­fin, and at least one of Dalí’s para­noid fan­tasies was proved true.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Jour­ney Through 933 Paint­ings by Sal­vador Dalí & Watch His Sig­na­ture Sur­re­al­ism Emerge

Sal­vador Dalí Gets Sur­re­al with 1950s Amer­i­ca: Watch His Appear­ances on What’s My Line? (1952) and The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1958)

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed a Sur­re­al­ist Fun­house at New York World’s Fair (1939)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Slot Machine Age: A 1964 British Newsreel Angsts Over Whether Automated Machines Will Displace People

in Film, History, Technology | October 14th, 2021

When Amer­i­cans hear the phrase “slot machine,” they think of pen­sion­ers com­pul­sive­ly pulling levers day and night in Las Vegas. But when the British hear it, a much less bleak vision comes to their minds: the auto­mat­ed dis­pen­sa­tion of cig­a­rettes, cof­fee, gro­ceries, and even entire meals. Or at least such a vision came to the minds of Britons back in 1964, the year of the British Pathé news­reel above. With its bril­liant col­ors and jazzy score, Slot Machine Age proud­ly dis­played to the view­ing pub­lic the range of coin-oper­at­ed won­ders already mak­ing their way into dai­ly life, from pay phones and pin­ball machines to shoe-buffers and bot­tle-recy­cling sta­tions.

“This inven­tion, this brain­child of the boffins, has cre­at­ed a new dis­ease,” declares the announc­er: “slot machine fever.” Again, this has noth­ing to do with gam­bling, and every­thing to do with automa­tion. Near­ly 60 years ago, buy­ing some­thing from a machine was a nov­el­ty to most peo­ple in even the most high­ly indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries on Earth.

Yet even then the automat, where din­ers pulled all their dish­es from coin-oper­at­ed win­dows, had in cer­tain cities been an insti­tu­tion for decades. Alas, such estab­lish­ments did­n’t sur­vive the explo­sion of fast food in the 1970s, whose busi­ness mod­el made use of more, not less, human labor.

But in the 1960s, the age of the robot seemed well on its way — so much so that this phrase titles anoth­er, slight­ly lat­er British Pathé pro­duc­tion show­cas­ing a “semi-com­put­er­ized ver­sion of the dumb­wait­er” being tried out in hotel rooms. From it the film’s hon­ey­moon­ing cou­ple extract cock­tails, peanuts, tooth­paste, and “that last cig­a­rette of the day.” It even offers read­ing mate­r­i­al, a con­cept since tried again in France, Poland, San Fran­cis­co, and an eccen­tric book­store in Toron­to, but the glo­ri­ous age of all-around con­ve­nience pre­dict­ed in these news­reels has yet to mate­ri­al­ize. We cit­i­zens of the 21st cen­tu­ry are in many cas­es hard­ly pleased, but rather anx­ious about what we see as our grow­ing depen­dence on automa­tion. Still, with the coro­n­avirus-induced vogue for con­tact-free pay­ment and din­ing, per­haps it’s time to give the automat anoth­er chance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 85,000 His­toric News­reel Films from British Pathé Free Online (1910–2008)

Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Pre­dic­tion That Automa­tion Will Neces­si­tate a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income

Buck­min­ster Fuller Rails Against the “Non­sense of Earn­ing a Liv­ing”: Why Work Use­less Jobs When Tech­nol­o­gy & Automa­tion Can Let Us Live More Mean­ing­ful Lives

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Watch the “Bib­lio-Mat” Book-Vend­ing Machine Dis­pense Lit­er­ary Delight

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.

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Watch Free Cult Films by Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi & More on the New Kino Cult Streaming Service

in Film | October 13th, 2021

For many Open Cul­ture read­ers, the Hal­loween sea­son offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty — not to say an excuse — to re-expe­ri­ence clas­sic hor­ror films: F.W. Mur­nau’s Nos­fer­atu from 1922, for instance, or even George Méliès The Haunt­ed Cas­tle, which launched the whole form in 1896. This year, may we sug­gest a home screen­ing of the for­mi­da­ble work of vin­tage cin­e­ma that is 1968’s The Astro Zom­bies? Writ­ten, pro­duced, and direct­ed by Ted Mikels — auteur of The Corpse Grinders and Blood Orgy of the She-Dev­ils — it fea­tures not just “a mad astro-sci­en­tist” played by John Car­ra­dine and “two gore-crazed, solar-pow­ered killer robot zom­bies,” but “a bloody trail of girl-next-door vic­tims; Chi­nese com­mu­nist spies; dead­ly Mex­i­can secret agents led by the insane­ly volup­tuous Tura Satana” and an “intre­pid CIA agent” on the case of it all.

You can watch The Astro Zom­bies for free, and new­ly remas­tered in HD to boot, at Kino Cult, the new stream­ing site from film and video dis­trib­u­tor Kino Lor­ber. Pull up the front page and you’ll be treat­ed to a wealth of tit­il­lat­ing view­ing options of a vari­ety of eras and sub­gen­res: “Dri­ve-in favorites” like Ape and Beware! The Blob; “gold­en age exploita­tion” like Reefer Mad­ness and She Shoul­da Said ‘No’!; and even clas­sics like Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis and Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Fear and Desire.

True cult-film enthu­si­asts, of course, may well go straight to the avail­able selec­tions, thought­ful­ly grouped togeth­er, from “Mas­ter of Ital­ian Hor­ror” Mario Bava and pro­lif­ic Span­ish “B‑movie” king­pin Jesús Fran­co. Those look­ing to throw a fright night might con­sid­er Kino Cult’s offer­ings filed under “hard­boiled hor­ror”: Kill­bil­lies, The House with 100 Eyes, Bun­ny: The Killer Thing.

Few of these pic­tures skimp on the grotesque; few­er still skimp on the humor, a nec­es­sary ingre­di­ent in even the most har­row­ing hor­ror movies. Far from a pile of cyn­i­cal hack­work, Kino Cult’s library has clear­ly been curat­ed with an eye toward films that, although for the most part pro­duced inex­pen­sive­ly and with unre­lent­ing intent to pro­voke vis­cer­al reac­tions in their audi­ences, are hard­ly with­out inter­est to seri­ous cinephiles. The site even includes an “art­sploita­tion” sec­tion con­tain­ing such taboo-breach­ing works as Cur­tis Burz’s Sum­mer House. Among its gen­er­al recent addi­tions you’ll also find Dog­tooth by Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, per­haps the most dar­ing high-pro­file provo­ca­teur cur­rent­ly at work in the medi­um. Since Kino Cult has made all these films and more avail­able to stream at no charge, none of us, no mat­ter our par­tic­u­lar cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties, has an excuse to pass this Hal­loween un-enter­tained — and more to the point, undis­turbed. Enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

The First Hor­ror Film, George Méliès’ The Haunt­ed Cas­tle (1896)

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of the 11 Scari­est Hor­ror Films

Stephen King’s 22 Favorite Movies: Full of Hor­ror & Sus­pense

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

What Scares Us, and How Does this Man­i­fest in Film? A Hal­loween Pret­ty Much Pop Cul­ture Pod­cast (#66)

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.

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Quentin Tarantino Gives a Tour of Video Archives, the Store Where He Worked Before Becoming a Filmmaker

in Film | October 8th, 2021

When Quentin Taran­ti­no hit it big in the 1990s with Reser­voir Dogs, and then much big­ger with Pulp Fic­tion, he became known as the auteur who’d received his film edu­ca­tion by work­ing as a video-store clerk. But like much Hol­ly­wood hype, that sto­ry was­n’t quite true. “No, I was already a movie expert,” says the man him­self in a clip from the 1994 BBC doc­u­men­tary Quentin Taran­ti­no: Hol­ly­wood’s Boy Won­der. “That’s how I got hired at Video Archives.” Locat­ed in the South Bay — a com­par­a­tive­ly lit­tle-seen region of Los Ange­les Coun­ty lat­er paid lov­ing trib­ute with Jack­ie Brown — the store was, in the words of one of its own­ers, “one of the few places that Quentin could come as a reg­u­lar guy and get a job and become like a star.”

“Me and the oth­er guys would walk into the local movie the­ater and we’d be head­ing toward our seats and we’d hear, ‘There go the guys from Video Archives,’ ” says Taran­ti­no in Tom Ros­ton’s I Lost It at the Video Store. On one lev­el, the expe­ri­ence con­sti­tut­ed “a primer to what it would be like to be famous.” Hav­ing begun as a Video Archives cus­tomer, Taran­ti­no wound up work­ing there for five years, offer­ing volu­mi­nous and force­ful rec­om­men­da­tions by day and, after clos­ing, putting on staff-only film fes­ti­vals by night. “That time is cap­tured per­fect­ly in True Romance,” which Tony Scott direct­ed but Taran­ti­no wrote, and one of those co-work­ers, Roger Avary, would col­lab­o­rate with him on the screen­play for Pulp Fic­tion.

Video Archives was a bea­con to all the South Bay’s “film geeks.” Then as now, most such peo­ple “devote a lot of mon­ey and they devote a lot of their life to the fol­low­ing of film, but they don’t real­ly have that much to show for all this devo­tion,” oth­er than their strong­ly held cin­e­mat­ic opin­ions. “What you find out fair­ly quick­ly in Hol­ly­wood is, this is a com­mu­ni­ty where hard­ly any­body trusts their own opin­ion. Peo­ple want peo­ple to tell them what is good, what to like, what not to like.” Hence the abil­i­ty of the young Taran­ti­no,  brim­ming with opin­ions and unafraid to state them and pos­sessed of an unwa­ver­ing resolve to make movies of his own, to go from video-store clerk­ing prac­ti­cal­ly straight to the top of the indus­try. Though he did­n’t need film school — nor col­lege, or indeed high school — he could hard­ly have found a more suit­able alma mater.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Last Video Store: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on How the World’s Old­est Video Store Still Sur­vives Today

Quentin Taran­ti­no Picks the 12 Best Films of All Time; Watch Two of His Favorites Free Online

Quentin Tarantino’s Hand­writ­ten List of the 11 “Great­est Movies”

Quentin Tarantino’s Copy­cat Cin­e­ma: How the Post­mod­ern Film­mak­er Per­fect­ed the Art of the Steal

Quentin Taran­ti­no Reviews Movies: From Dunkirk and King of New York, to Soul Broth­ers of Kung Fu & More

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.

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Quentin Tarantino Reviews Movies: From Dunkirk and King of New York, to Soul Brothers of Kung Fu & More

in Film | September 28th, 2021

Some of the most influ­en­tial direc­tors of the French New Wave, like Jean-Luc Godard, François Truf­faut, and Éric Rohmer, first stepped into the world of film as crit­ics. They found their voic­es by pub­lish­ing in the Paris cinephile insti­tu­tion of Cahiers du ciné­ma; a few decades lat­er, Quentin Taran­ti­no found his own by work­ing at the Man­hat­tan Beach cinephile insti­tu­tion of Video Archives. Sto­ries of all the myr­i­ad ways in which he would express his enthu­si­asm for and exper­tise on cin­e­ma there have passed into leg­end. But just like the crit­ics Godard, Truf­faut, and Rohmer, the video-store clerk Taran­ti­no ulti­mate­ly seems to have signed on to the old propo­si­tion that the best response to a work of art is anoth­er work of art.

Taran­ti­no’s endorse­ments of and intro­duc­tions to the work of oth­er direc­tors (for exam­ple, the one he record­ed for Wong Kar-wai’s Chungk­ing Express) have giv­en us a sense of his cin­e­mat­ic taste. So, in an even more telling man­ner, do the ele­ments he steals — by his own admis­sion — from oth­er movies.

A look at the dance scene in Pulp Fic­tion, for exam­ple, reveals a film­mak­er well acquaint­ed with the French New Wave, and even more so with the work of Italia mas­ter Fed­eri­co Felli­ni that came out in the same era. And even if you think you could go head-to-head with Taran­ti­no on mid­cen­tu­ry Euro­pean auteurs, could you match his under­stand­ing of A Man Called Tiger, Fatal Nee­dles vs. Fatal Fists, or Soul Broth­ers of Kung Fu?

Those are just three of the films Taran­ti­no has reviewed at the web site of the New Bev­er­ly Cin­e­ma, the the­ater he owns in Los Ange­les. Pub­lished in a low-pro­file man­ner, these short essays on the kind of 1970s Hong Kong mar­tial-arts pic­tures that right­ful­ly belong on down­town triple-bills (and that Taran­ti­no sure­ly first saw on down­town triple-bills) exude the kind of fan-crit­ic ener­gy that brings to mind bygone days of the inter­net.

Not that Taran­ti­no eschews more recent movies and movie media. In late 2019 and ear­ly 2010, he appeared three times on The Ringer’s The Rewatch­ables pod­cast to share his thoughts on three pic­tures worth see­ing again: Christo­pher Nolan’s Dunkirk from 2017, Tony Scot­t’s Unstop­pable from 2010, and Abel Fer­rara’s King of New York from 1990. Lis­ten and you may just feel like a Video Archive cus­tomer in the 1980s, get­ting rec­om­men­da­tions from an odd­ly per­sua­sive clerk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Picks the 12 Best Films of All Time; Watch Two of His Favorites Free Online

Quentin Tarantino’s Hand­writ­ten List of the 11 “Great­est Movies”

An Analy­sis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Nar­rat­ed (Most­ly) by Quentin Taran­ti­no

Quentin Tarantino’s Copy­cat Cin­e­ma: How the Post­mod­ern Film­mak­er Per­fect­ed the Art of the Steal

Quentin Taran­ti­no Releas­es His First Nov­el: A Pulpy Nov­el­iza­tion of Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood

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.

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Watch a Gripping 10-Minute Animation About the Hunt for Nazi War Criminal Adolf Eichmann

in Animation, Film, History | September 26th, 2021

In Feb­ru­ary 2018, the Con­fer­ence on Jew­ish Mate­r­i­al Claims Against Ger­many con­duct­ed inter­views with 1,350 Amer­i­can adults, aged 18 and up.

Their find­ings, pub­lished as the Holo­caust Knowl­edge and Aware­ness Study, reveal a sharp decline in Amer­i­cans’ aware­ness of the state-spon­sored exter­mi­na­tion of six mil­lion Jew­ish men, women, and chil­dren by Nazi Ger­many and its col­lab­o­ra­tors.

This knowl­edge gap was par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­nounced among the mil­len­ni­al respon­dents. Six­ty-six per­cent had not heard of Auschwitz — the largest of the Ger­man Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camps and exter­mi­na­tion cen­ters, where over a mil­lion per­ished. Twen­ty-two per­cent of them had not heard of (or were unsure if they had heard of) the Holo­caust.

This is shock­ing to those of us who grew up read­ing The Diary of Anne Frank and attend­ing assem­blies where Holo­caust sur­vivors — often the old­er rel­a­tive of a class­mate — spoke of their expe­ri­ences, rolling up their sleeves to show us the ser­i­al num­bers that had been tat­tooed on their arms upon arrival at Auschwitz.

The study did make the heart­en­ing dis­cov­ery that near­ly all of the respon­dents — 93% — believed that the Holo­caust should be a top­ic of study in the schools, many cit­ing their belief that such an edu­ca­tion will pre­vent a calami­ty of that mag­ni­tude from hap­pen­ing again.

(In defense of mil­len­ni­als, it’s worth not­ing that in the decades since 1977, when more than half of the coun­try tuned in to watch the minis­eries Roots, the Civ­il War and the hor­rors of slav­ery had all but dis­ap­peared from Amer­i­can cur­ricu­lums, a direc­tion the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment is fight­ing to redress.)

The Holo­caust is such a huge sub­ject that there is a ques­tion of how to intro­duce it, ide­al­ly, in such a way that young peo­ple’s inter­est is sparked toward con­tin­u­ing their edu­ca­tion.

The Dri­ver is Red, Ran­dall Christo­pher’s ani­mat­ed short, above, could make an excel­lent, if some­what unusu­al, start­ing place.

The film’s text is drawn from Israeli Mossad Spe­cial Agent Zvi Aha­roni’s first per­son account of the suc­cess­ful man­hunt that tracked Adolf Eich­mann, a mem­ber of Hein­rich Himm­ler’s inner cir­cle and archi­tect of the Nazi’s “final solu­tion,” to Argenti­na.

This event tran­spired in 1960, fif­teen years after Sovi­et troops lib­er­at­ed Auschwitz.

Aha­roni, voiced by actor Mark Pin­ter, recalls receiv­ing the tip that Eich­mann was liv­ing in Argenti­na under an assumed name, and locat­ing him in a mod­est dwelling on the out­skirts of Buenos Aires.

Film­mak­er Christo­pher builds the ten­sion dur­ing the ensu­ing stake­out with effec­tive, noir-ish, pen­cil sketch­es that take shape before our eyes, map­ping sur­veil­lance points, a cou­ple of hap­py acci­dents, and one har­row­ing moment where Aha­roni feared his for­eign accent might give him away.

There’s more to the sto­ry than can be packed in a four­teen minute film, but those four­teen min­utes are as grip­ping as any tight­ly plot­ted spy movie.

Christo­pher is less inter­est­ed in direct­ing the next James Bond flick than putting Holo­caust edu­ca­tion back on the table for all Amer­i­cans.

A 2016 New York Times arti­cle about the hand­writ­ten let­ter Eich­mann sent Israeli Pres­i­dent Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, beg­ging for clemen­cy, paved the way for the film by moti­vat­ing Christo­pher to fill in some gaps in his edu­ca­tion with regard to the Holo­caust.

As the then-46-year-old told Leo­rah Gavi­dor of The San Diego Read­er in 2018:

I (felt) so dumb, so igno­rant, being an adult in Amer­i­ca and not know­ing the his­to­ry of it.

My friends, peo­ple I told this sto­ry to, they were fas­ci­nat­ed. They would start lis­ten­ing very care­ful­ly when I start­ed to talk about this Nazi from Ger­many that was found 15 years after the war, halfway around the world. They didn’t know any­thing about it. That’s how I knew I was on to some­thing.

Before the film was com­plet­ed, Christo­pher staged a live read­ing of the script at San Diego’s Ver­ba­tim Books, then passed the mic to Holo­caust sur­vivor Rose Schindler, who told the audi­ence about sur­viv­ing Auschwitz.

As Christo­pher recalled:

Peo­ple were trip­ping. There’s three lines about Tre­blin­ka in the film, and this Nazi war crim­i­nal, and then they see some­one there, with the tat­too on her arm, in front of them, who expe­ri­enced this first­hand.

Mrs. Schindler became a Holo­caust edu­ca­tor in 1972, when her son’s teacher invit­ed her to share her sto­ry with his mid­dle school class­mates.

She is now 91.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Holo­caust in Film and Lit­er­a­ture: A Free Online Course from UCLA 

Holo­caust Sur­vivor Vik­tor Fran­kl Explains Why If We Have True Mean­ing in Our Lives, We Can Make It Through the Dark­est of Times

96-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Fronts a Death Met­al Band

100-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Helen Fagin Reads Her Let­ter About How Books Save Lives

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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King Arthur in Film: Our Most Enduring Popular Entertainment Franchise? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #104

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | September 15th, 2021

With the recent the­atri­cal release of The Green Knight, your Pret­ty Much Pop host Mark Lin­sen­may­er, return­ing host Bri­an Hirt, plus Den of Geek’s David Crow and the very British Al Bak­er con­sid­er the range of cin­e­mat­ic Arthuri­ana, includ­ing Excal­ibur (1981), Camelot (1967), King Arthur (2004), King Arthur: Leg­end of the Sword (2017), First Knight (1995), Sword of the Valiant (1983), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1973), and Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).

Arthuri­ana encom­pass­es numer­ous (some­times con­tra­dict­ing) sto­ries that accrued and evolved for near­ly 1000 years after the prob­a­ble exis­tence of the unknown per­son who was the his­tor­i­cal source for the char­ac­ter before the 14th cen­tu­ry poem (author unknown) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and then in the 15th cen­tu­ry Sir Thomas Mal­o­ry wrote Le Morte d’Arthur, which pro­vid­ed the tem­plate for well-known mod­ern retellings like T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (1958).

The length and com­plex­i­ty of this mythol­o­gy makes a sin­gle film prob­lem­at­ic, with most set­tling on the love tri­an­gle between Arthur, Lancelot, and Guin­e­vere lead­ing to Camelot’s down­fall. Mul­ti­ple TV treat­ments have tried to do it jus­tice, and if Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Leg­end of the Sword had been a box office suc­cess, then we’d cur­rent­ly be see­ing mul­ti­ple films in an Arthuri­an cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse. By pick­ing a small­er sto­ry and not try­ing too hard to tie it to King Arthur (who appears but is not named), The Green Knight is able to be more cre­ative in paint­ing and updat­ing the strange sto­ry of Sir Gawain, who in pre­vi­ous cin­e­mat­ic out­ings (includ­ing Sword of the Valiant where Sean Con­nery played The Green Knight) involved Gawain involved in a series of non­sen­si­cal adven­tures far removed from the events told in the orig­i­nal poem.

We talk through char­ac­ter­i­za­tion in a myth­ic sto­ry, styl­iz­ing the epic (how much vio­lence? how weird?), its sta­tus as pub­lic domain mate­r­i­al (like Robin Hood and Sher­lock Holmes), and the moral les­son of the orig­i­nal Gawain poem and what direc­tor David Low­ery did with that for the new film. Is the new film actu­al­ly enjoy­able, or just care­ful­ly thought through and art­ful­ly shot? Note that we don’t spoil any­thing sig­nif­i­cant about The Green Knight until the last ten min­utes, so it’s fine if you haven’t seen it (Al had­n’t either).

Here are song arti­cles by David Crow on our top­ic:

Oth­er arti­cles we used to prep for this includ­ed:

The YouTube ver­sions of the source mate­r­i­al that Mark lis­tened to are here and here, and the rel­e­vant Great Cours­es offer­ing is here.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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