How Storyboarding Works: A Brief Introduction to How Ridley Scott, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson & Other Directors Storyboard Their Films

in Art, Film | September 29th, 2020

When you’re mak­ing a film with com­plex shots or sequences of shots, it does­n’t hurt to have sto­ry­boards. Though pro­fes­sion­al sto­ry­board artists do exist, they don’t come cheap, and in any case they con­sti­tute one more play­er in the game of tele­phone between those who’ve envi­sioned the final cin­e­mat­ic prod­uct and the col­lab­o­ra­tors essen­tial to real­iz­ing it. It thus great­ly behooves aspir­ing direc­tors to devel­op their draw­ing skills, though you hard­ly need to be a full-fledged drafts­man like Rid­ley Scott or even a pro­fi­cient com­ic artist like Bong Joon-ho for your work to ben­e­fit from sto­ry­board­ing.

You do, how­ev­er, need to under­stand the lan­guage of sto­ry­board­ing, essen­tial­ly a means of trans­lat­ing the rich lan­guage of cin­e­ma into fig­ures (stick fig­ures if need be), rec­tan­gles, and arrows — lots of arrows. Draw­ing on exam­ples from Star Wars and Juras­sic Park to Taxi Dri­ver and The Big Lebows­ki, the Rock­etJump Film School video above explains how sto­ry­boards work in less than ten min­utes.

As sto­ry­board artist Kevin Sen­za­ki explains how these draw­ings visu­al­ize a film in advance of and as a guide for film­mak­ing process, we see a vari­ety of sto­ry­boards rang­ing from crude sketch­es to near­ly com­ic book-lev­el detail, all com­pared to cor­re­spond­ing clips from the fin­ished pro­duc­tion.

These exam­ples come from the work of such direc­tors as Alfred Hitch­cock, Mar­tin Scors­ese, James Cameron, Wes Ander­son, and Christo­pher Nolan — all of whose films, you’ll notice, have no slight visu­al ambi­tions. When a shot or sequence requires seri­ous visu­al effects work, or even when a cam­era has to make just the right move to advance the action, sto­ry­boards are prac­ti­cal­ly essen­tial. Not that every suc­cess­ful direc­tor uses them: no less an auteur than Wern­er Her­zog has called sto­ry­boards “the instru­ments of the cow­ards,” those who can’t han­dle the spon­tane­ity of either film­mak­ing or life itself. Rather, he tells aspir­ing direc­tors to “read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read… read, read… read.” But then so did Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, who did­n’t just draw his movies in advance — he paint­ed them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rid­ley Scott Demys­ti­fies the Art of Sto­ry­board­ing (and How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Project)

How the Coen Broth­ers Sto­ry­board­ed Blood Sim­ple Down to a Tee (1984)

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Paint­ed the Sto­ry­boards For Scenes in His Epic Films: Com­pare Can­vas to Cel­lu­loid

How Bong Joon-ho’s Sto­ry­boards for Par­a­site (Now Pub­lished as a Graph­ic Nov­el) Metic­u­lous­ly Shaped the Acclaimed Film

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

Down­load New Sto­ry­board­ing Soft­ware That’s Free & Open Source

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Understanding Chris Marker’s Radical Sci-Fi Film La Jetée: A Study Guide Distributed to High Schools in the 1970s

in Education, Film | September 25th, 2020

Pop quiz, hot shot. World War III has dev­as­tat­ed civ­i­liza­tion. As a pris­on­er of sur­vivors liv­ing beneath the ruins of Paris, you’re made to go trav­el back in time, to the era of your own child­hood, in order to secure aid for the present from the past. What do you do? You prob­a­bly nev­er faced this ques­tion in school — unless you were in one of the class­rooms of the 1970s that received the study guide for Chris Mark­er’s La Jetée. Like the inno­v­a­tive 1962 sci­ence-fic­tion short itself, this edu­ca­tion­al pam­phlet was dis­trib­uted (and recent­ly tweet­ed out again) by Janus Films, the com­pa­ny that first brought to Amer­i­can audi­ences the work of auteurs like Ing­mar Bergman, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa.

Writ­ten by Con­necti­cut prep-school teacher Tom Andrews, this study guide describes La Jetée as “a bril­liant mix­ture of fan­ta­sy and pseu­do-sci­en­tif­ic romance” that “explores new dra­mat­ic ter­ri­to­ry and forms, and rush­es with a stun­ning log­ic and a pow­er­ful impact to its shock­ing cli­max.”

The film does all this “almost entire­ly in still pho­tographs, their sta­t­ic state cor­re­spond­ing to the strat­i­fi­ca­tion of mem­o­ry.” More prac­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, at “twen­ty-sev­en min­utes in length, La Jetée is an ide­al class-peri­od vehi­cle” that “can help stu­dents spec­u­late on the awe­some poten­tial of life as it may exist after a third world war” as well as “man’s inhu­man­i­ty to man, not only as it may occur in the future, but as it already has occurred in our past.”

“Why do you sup­pose Mark­er filmed La Jetée in still pho­tographs? What sig­nif­i­cance does the one moment of live action have?” “How does Mark­er’s con­cept of time and space com­pare with that of H.G. Wells in the lat­ter’s nov­el, The Time Machine?” “If the man of this sto­ry has helped his cap­tors to per­fect the tech­nique of time trav­el, why do they wish to liq­ui­date him?” These and oth­er sug­gest­ed dis­cus­sion ques­tions appear at the end of the study guide, all of whose pages you can read at Socks. It was pro­duced for Films for Now and The Human Con­di­tion, “two reper­to­ries for high school assem­blies and group dis­cus­sions” based on Janus’ for­mi­da­ble cin­e­ma library. (François Truf­faut’s The 400 Blows also looks to have been among their edu­ca­tion­al offer­ings.) You can see fur­ther analy­sis of La Jetée in A.O. Scot­t’s New York Times Crit­ics’ Picks video, as well as the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion video essay Echo Cham­ber: Lis­ten­ing to La Jetée.

Much lat­er, in the mid-1990s, Ter­ry Gilliam would pay trib­ute with his Hol­ly­wood homage 12 Mon­keys, and Mark­er him­self still had many films to make, includ­ing his sec­ond mas­ter­piece, the equal­ly uncon­ven­tion­al Sans Soleil. But at time of this study guide’s pub­li­ca­tion, La Jetée’s con­sid­er­able influ­ence had only just begun to man­i­fest. It was around then that pio­neer­ing cyber­punk nov­el­ist William Gib­son viewed the film in col­lege. “I left the lec­ture hall where it had been screened in an altered state, pro­found­ly alone,” he lat­er remem­bered. “My sense of what sci­ence fic­tion could be had been per­ma­nent­ly altered.” Per­haps his instruc­tor heed­ed Andrews’ advice that “teach­ers would prob­a­bly do bet­ter not to ‘pre­pare’ their stu­dents for view­ing this film.” Not that any­one, in the 58 years of the film’s exis­tence, has any­one ever tru­ly been pre­pared for their first view­ing of La Jetée.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Chris Marker’s Rad­i­cal Sci­Fi Film, La Jetée, Changed the Life of Cyber­punk Prophet, William Gib­son

David Bowie’s Music Video “Jump They Say” Pays Trib­ute to Marker’s La Jetée, Godard’s Alphav­ille, Welles’ The Tri­al & Kubrick’s 2001

Petite Planète: Dis­cov­er Chris Marker’s Influ­en­tial 1950s Trav­el Pho­to­book Series

A Con­cise Break­down of How Time Trav­el Works in Pop­u­lar Movies, Books & TV Shows

Free MIT Course Teach­es You to Watch Movies Like a Crit­ic: Watch Lec­tures from The Film Expe­ri­ence

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch Chilling Footage of the Hiroshima & Nagasaki Bombings in Restored Color

in Film, History | September 24th, 2020

“You saw noth­ing in Hiroshi­ma. Noth­ing,” says Eiji Oka­da in the open­ing of Alain Resnais’ Hiroshi­ma mon amour. “I saw every­thing,” replies Emmanuelle Riva. “Every­thing.” The film goes on to show the effects of the Amer­i­can atom­ic-bomb attack that dev­as­tat­ed the tit­u­lar city near­ly fif­teen years before. This was the first many view­ers had seen of the lega­cy of that unprece­dent­ed act of destruc­tion, and now, six decades lat­er, the cul­tur­al image of Hiroshi­ma has con­flat­ed Resnais’ stark French New Wave vision with actu­al wartime doc­u­men­tary mate­ri­als. By now, we’ve all seen con­tem­po­rary pho­tographs (and even film clips) of the fate of Hiroshi­ma and sub­se­quent­ly atom­ic-bombed Nagasa­ki. Can we regard this world-his­toric destruc­tion with fresh eyes?

A Youtu­ber known as Rick88888888 offers one way of poten­tial­ly doing so: almost half an hour of col­orized (as well as motion-sta­bi­lized, de-noised, and oth­er­wise enhanced) footage of not just the explo­sions them­selves, but the ruined Japan­ese cities and their strug­gling sur­vivors, the air­planes that per­formed the bomb­ing, and the Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent who ordered it. “The Japan­ese began the war from the air at Pearl Har­bor,” says Har­ry Tru­man in a broad­cast on August 6, 1945, the day of the attack on Hiroshi­ma. “They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet.” From the Pres­i­dent, the Amer­i­can pub­lic first learned of the devel­op­ment of an atom­ic bomb, “a har­ness­ing of the basic pow­er of the uni­verse. The force from which the sun draws its pow­er has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.”

As we know now, this was the fruit of the Man­hat­tan Project, the secret U.S.-led research-and-devel­op­ment effort that cre­at­ed the first nuclear weapons. Its suc­cess, Tru­man says, pre­pared the Allies to “oblit­er­ate more rapid­ly and com­plete­ly every pro­duc­tive enter­prise the Japan­ese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their fac­to­ries, and their com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Let there be no mis­take; we shall com­plete­ly destroy Japan’s pow­er to make war.” That they did, although mil­i­tary his­to­ri­ans argue about about the jus­ti­fi­a­bil­i­ty of drop­ping “the bomb” as well as the exact extent it played in the ulti­mate Allied vic­to­ry. But nobody can argue with the strik­ing vivid­ness of these “col­or” motion pic­tures of the event itself and its after­math, which reminds us that the era of poten­tial nuclear anni­hi­la­tion does­n’t belong to the dis­tant past — rather, it’s a chap­ter of his­to­ry that has only just begun.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

J. Robert Oppen­heimer Explains How He Recit­ed a Line from Bha­gavad Gita–“Now I Am Become Death, the Destroy­er of Worlds”–Upon Wit­ness­ing the First Nuclear Explo­sion

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

The “Shad­ow” of a Hiroshi­ma Vic­tim, Etched into Stone Steps, Is All That Remains After 1945 Atom­ic Blast

Hiroshi­ma After the Atom­ic Bomb in 360 Degrees

Way of Life: Rare Footage of the Hiroshi­ma After­math, 1946

Pho­tos of Hiroshi­ma by Hiroshi­ma Mon Amour Star Emmanuelle Riva (1958)

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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30 Buster Keaton Films: “The Greatest of All Comic Actors,” “One of the Greatest Filmmakers of All Time”

in Film | September 22nd, 2020

The great­est of the silent clowns is Buster Keaton, not only because of what he did, but because of how he did it. —Roger Ebert

In 1987, Video mag­a­zine pub­lished a sto­ry titled “Where’s Buster?” lament­ing the lack of Buster Keaton films avail­able on video­tape, “despite renewed inter­est” in a leg­end who was “about to regain his right­ful place next to Chap­lin in silent comedy’s pan­theon.” How things have changed for Keaton fans and admir­ers. Not only are most of the stone-faced com­ic genius’ films avail­able online, but he has maybe eclipsed Chap­lin as the most pop­u­lar­ly revered silent film star of the 1920s.

Keaton has always been held in the high­est esteem by his fel­low artists. He was dubbed “the great­est of all the clowns in the his­to­ry of the cin­e­ma” by Orson Welles, and served as a sig­nif­i­cant inspi­ra­tion for Samuel Beck­ett. (He was the playwright’s first choice to play Wait­ing for Godot’s Lucky, though he was too per­plexed by the script to take the role). In Peter Bogdanovich’s new doc­u­men­tary, The Great Buster: A Cel­e­bra­tion, Mel Brooks and Carl Rein­er dis­cuss his foun­da­tion­al influ­ence on their com­e­dy, and Wern­er Her­zog calls him “the essence of movies.”

For many years, how­ev­er, the state of Keaton’s fil­mog­ra­phy made it hard for the gen­er­al pub­lic to ful­ly appraise his work. “The Gen­er­al, with Buster as a train engi­neer in the Civ­il War, has always been avail­able,” Roger Ebert wrote in 2002, and has been “hailed as one of the supreme mas­ter­pieces of silent film­mak­ing. But oth­er fea­tures and shorts exist­ed in shab­by, incom­plete prints, if at all, and it was only in the 1960s that film his­to­ri­ans began to assem­ble and restore Keaton’s life­work. Now almost every­thing has been recov­ered, restored, and is avail­able on DVDs and tapes that range from watch­able to sparkling.”


Access to Keaton’s films has fur­ther expand­ed as a dozen or so entered the pub­lic domain in recent years, includ­ing two fea­tures, Sher­lock, Jr. and The Nav­i­ga­tor, this year and three more to come in 2021. You can watch thir­ty-one of Keaton’s restored, recov­ered films on YouTube, at the links below, shared by MetaFil­ter user Going to Maine, who writes, “where, oh where, in this mod­ern world, can we find the gems of his gold­en era? The obvi­ous place.”

Keaton starred in his first fea­ture-length film, The Sap­head, in 1920. For the next decade, until the end of the silent era, he dom­i­nat­ed the box office, along­side Chap­lin and Harold Lloyd, with his can­ny blend of dare­dev­il slap­stick and every­man pathos. After the twen­ties, his career floun­dered, then rebound­ed. His last pic­ture was a return to silent film in Beckett’s 1966 short, “Film,” made the year of his death. Since then, Keaton appre­ci­a­tion has become almost a form of wor­ship.

In 2018, The Gen­er­al came in at num­ber 34 on Sight & Sound’s Great­est Films of All Time list. But the BFI’s Geoff Andrew argued that it deserved the top spot, and Keaton deserves recog­ni­tion as “not mere­ly the great­est of the silent come­di­ans,” but “the great­est of all com­ic actors to have appeared on the sil­ver screen… not only a great Amer­i­can film­mak­er of the silent era,” but “one of the great­est film­mak­ers of all time, any­where.” Andrew likens him to a god, but “unlike gods… Buster has the advan­tage of being able to make us laugh. And laugh. And laugh.”

Don’t we all need a steady sup­ply of that med­i­cine these days? See Keaton’s clas­sic silent com­e­dy The Gen­er­al fur­ther up and watch 29 more Keaton films at the links below. Many will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Short Films

One Week (Sep­tem­ber 1, 1920)
Con­vict 13 (Octo­ber 27, 1920)
Neigh­bors (Decem­ber 22, 1920)
The Scare­crow (Decem­ber 22, 1920)
The Haunt­ed House (Feb­ru­ary 10, 1921)
Hard Luck (March 14, 1921)
The High Sign (April 12, 1921)
The Goat (May 18, 1921)
The Play­house (Octo­ber 6, 1921) (This con­tains a faux min­strel show seg­ment with black­face.)
The Boat (Novem­ber 10, 1921)
The Pale­face (Jan­u­ary, 1922) (Racist depic­tions of Native Amer­i­cans)
Cops (March, 1922)
My Wife’s Rela­tions (May, 1922)
The Black­smith (July 21, 1922)
The Frozen North (August 28, 1922)
The Elec­tric House (Octo­ber, 1922)
Day Dreams (Novem­ber, 1922)
The Bal­loonat­ic (Jan­u­ary 22, 1923)
The Love Nest (March, 1923)

Fea­tures

Three Ages (Sep­tem­ber 24, 1923)
Our Hos­pi­tal­i­ty (Novem­ber 19, 1923)
Sher­lock Jr. (May 11, 1924)
The Nav­i­ga­tor (Octo­ber 13, 1924)
Sev­en Chances (March 15, 1925)
Go West (Novem­ber 1, 1925)
Bat­tling But­ler (Sep­tem­ber 19, 1926)
The Gen­er­al (Decem­ber 31, 1926)
Col­lege (Novem­ber 1927)
Steam­boat Bill, Jr. (May 20, 1928)

Bonus! Two of Keaton’s Last Films

The Rail­rod­der, for the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da (Octo­ber 2, 1965)
Film, direct­ed by Samuel Beck­ett (Jan­u­ary 8, 1965)

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Super­cut of Buster Keaton’s Most Amaz­ing Stunts

Buster Keaton: The Won­der­ful Gags of the Found­ing Father of Visu­al Com­e­dy

List of Great Pub­lic Domain Films 

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

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How Bong Joon-ho’s Storyboards for Parasite (Now Published as a Graphic Novel) Meticulously Shaped the Acclaimed Film

in Books, Film | September 22nd, 2020

In Seoul, where I live, the suc­cess of Bong Joon-ho’s Par­a­site at this year’s Acad­e­my Awards — unprece­dent­ed for a non-Amer­i­can film, let alone a Kore­an one — did not go unno­ticed. But even then, the cel­e­bra­tion had already been under­way at least since the movie won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Some­thing of a home­com­ing for Bong after Snow­piercer and Okja, two projects made whol­ly or par­tial­ly abroad, Par­a­site takes place entire­ly in Seoul, stag­ing a socioe­co­nom­ic grudge match between three fam­i­lies occu­py­ing stark­ly dis­parate places in the human hier­ar­chy. The denoue­ment is chaot­ic, but arrived at through the pre­ci­sion film­mak­ing with which Bong has made his name over the past two decades.

When Par­a­site’s sto­ry­boards were pub­lished in graph­ic-nov­el form here a few months ago, I noticed ads in the sub­way promis­ing a look into the mind of “Bong­tail.” Though Bong has pub­licly declared his con­tempt for that nick­name, it has nev­er­the­less stuck as a reflec­tion of his metic­u­lous way of work­ing.

The son of a graph­ic design­er, he grew up not just watch­ing movies but draw­ing comics, a prac­tice that would lat­er place him well to cre­ate his own sto­ry­boards. In so doing he assem­bles an entire film in his mind before shoot­ing its first frame (a work­ing process not dis­sim­i­lar to that of West­ern film­mak­ers like the Coen broth­ers), which enables him and his col­lab­o­ra­tors to exe­cute com­plex sequences such as what the Nerd­writer calls Par­a­site’s “per­fect mon­tage.”

With the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Par­a­site: A Graph­ic Nov­el in Sto­ry­boards now avail­able, video essay­ists like Thomas Flight have made com­par­isons between Bong’s draw­ings and the film. Start­ing with that cel­e­brat­ed mon­tage, Flight shows that, where the final prod­uct departs from its plan, it usu­al­ly does so to sim­pli­fy the hand-drawn action, mak­ing it more leg­i­ble and ele­gant. In the short video just above, you can watch one minute of Par­a­site lined up with its cor­re­spond­ing sto­ry­board pan­els, one of which incor­po­rates a pho­to­graph of the real Seoul neigh­bor­hood in which Bong locat­ed the main char­ac­ters’ home. This is rich sto­ry­board­ing indeed, but in his intro­duc­tion to the book, Bong explains that he does­n’t con­sid­er it essen­tial to film­mak­ing, just essen­tial to him: “I actu­al­ly sto­ry­board to quell my own anx­i­ety.” Would that we could all draw world­wide acclaim from doing the same.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Secret of the “Per­fect Mon­tage” at the Heart of Par­a­site, the Kore­an Film Now Sweep­ing World Cin­e­ma

Mar­tin Scors­ese Intro­duces Film­mak­er Hong Sang­soo, “The Woody Allen of Korea”

Watch More Than 400 Clas­sic Kore­an Films Free Online Thanks to the Kore­an Film Archive

How the Coen Broth­ers Sto­ry­board­ed Blood Sim­ple Down to a Tee (1984)

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Paint­ed the Sto­ry­boards For Scenes in His Epic Films: Com­pare Can­vas to Cel­lu­loid

Rid­ley Scott Demys­ti­fies the Art of Sto­ry­board­ing (and How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Project)

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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If Werner Herzog Reviewed Trader Joe’s on Yelp: “Madness Reigns. The First Challenge Your Soul Must Endure Is the Parking Lot”

in Comedy, Film, Life | September 21st, 2020

I like the Inter­net for var­i­ous things, but it’s lim­it­ed. I’m not on social media, but you will find me in the social media. There’s Face­book, there’s Twit­ters, but it’s all not me.

—Wern­er Her­zog in an inter­view with The Hol­ly­wood Reporter

The night before his 2016 doc­u­men­tary Lo and Behold: Rever­ies of the Con­nect­ed World pre­miered at Sun­dance, direc­tor Wern­er Her­zog declared him­self “still a lib­er­at­ed vir­gin” with regard to his reliance on the Inter­net:

I think we have to aban­don this kind of false secu­ri­ty that every­thing is set­tled now, that we have so much assis­tance by dig­i­tal media and robots and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. At the same time, we over­look how vul­ner­a­ble all this is, and how we are los­ing the essen­tials that make us human. That’s my advice … Cook a meal at least three times a week. Play a musi­cal instru­ment. Read books and trav­el on foot.

That said, he’s not immune to the reju­ve­nat­ing effects of ran­dom cat videos at the end of a tir­ing day, as he told Stu­dio 360’s Kurt Ander­sen dur­ing a pro­mo­tion­al vis­it for 2018’s Meet­ing Gor­bachev:

Per­haps guess­ing that Googling his own name is not one of Herzog’s pre­ferred online activ­i­ties, Ander­son took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hip his guest to come­di­an Paul F. Tomp­kins’ Teu­ton­ic-inflect­ed recita­tion of a noto­ri­ous Yelp review of Trad­er Joe’s in Sil­ver Lake.

To the untrained ear, Tomp­kins’ Her­zog is pitch per­fect.

The spoof’s sub­ject sug­gest­ed that the accent could use improve­ment, but agreed that the text is “very fun­ny.”

And it is, espe­cial­ly giv­en the pedes­tri­an tenor of the same Trad­er Joe’s oth­er 5‑star reviews:

This is the best Trad­er Joe’s loca­tion I’ve been to! Been com­ing here since I was a kid! (I’m 25 now) I’ve moved out of this area but still come to this loca­tion just because it beats the rest of them. — Deb­bie G

TJ is the best!! I’ve been com­ing here for many years, and the food is great!! The employ­ee’s are awe­some! Some of the many things I love to pur­chase here are: salmon balls, smooth­ies like the chia seed straw­ber­ry, pro­tein almond but­ter drinks, coconut smooth­ie, cashew yogurt, south west­ern sal­ad that comes in a bag is BOMB.COM! — Ray­mond M

Tomp­kins tapped Herzog’s fas­ci­na­tion with man’s ani­mal nature and the bru­tal­i­ty of exis­tence for anoth­er Yelp review, award­ing three stars to San Francisco’s Hotel Majes­tic and attribut­ing it to Wern­er H:

Tomp­kins clear­ly savors the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chan­nel Her­zog, log­ging 16 appear­ances for the char­ac­ter on the Com­e­dy Bang Bang pod­cast, includ­ing episodes where­in he dis­cuss­es work­ing with Tom Cruise and his desire to be cast as a clue­less sub­ur­ban hus­band in an appli­ance com­mer­cial. Find them all list­ed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dream-Dri­ven Film­mak­ing of Wern­er Her­zog: Watch the Video Essay, “The Inner Chron­i­cle of What We Are: Under­stand­ing Wern­er Her­zog”

Wern­er Her­zog Cre­ates Required Read­ing & Movie View­ing Lists for Enrolling in His Film School

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing and Life Advice

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

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The Life, Work & Philosophy of Bill Murray: Happy 70th Birthday to an American Comedy Icon

in Comedy, Film | September 21st, 2020

Image by Gage Skid­more, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“Bill Mur­ray is to me what cal­cu­la­tors are to math,” Jason Schwartz­man once said of his esteemed col­league. “I nev­er knew math before cal­cu­la­tors, and I nev­er knew life before Bill Mur­ray.” Hav­ing been born in the 1980s, a decade Mur­ray entered already well-known after three ear­ly sea­sons of Sat­ur­day Night Live, I could say the same. Through char­ac­ters like Nick the lounge singer and half a nerd cou­ple with Gil­da Rad­ner, Mur­ray estab­lished him­self on that show as a goof­ball, but a goof­ball of a high­er order. As the 80s got into full swing, Mur­ray got into the movies, and ever more promi­nent roles in the likes of Cad­dyshack, Stripes, and Ghost­busters assured him a per­ma­nent place in the pan­theon of Amer­i­can com­e­dy.

For those who cared to look, there has long been evi­dence of con­cen­trat­ed thought and feel­ing behind the dead­pan impul­sive­ness of Mur­ray’s onscreen per­sona: his sup­port­ing turn as Dustin Hoff­man’s lemon-eat­ing play­wright room­mate in Toot­sie, his pas­sion-project adap­ta­tion of Som­er­set Maugh­am’s The Razor’s Edge, his post-Ghost­busters escape to the Sor­bonne.

It was in Paris that Mur­ray stud­ied the work of the Gre­co-Armen­ian Sufi mys­tic G.I. Gur­d­ji­eff, who describes a path to enlight­en­ment called “the way of the sly man,” one who makes max­i­mum use of “the world, the self, and the self that is observ­ing every­thing.” This con­cept, accord­ing to the Wise­crack video above, has become inte­gral to Mur­ray’s dis­tinc­tive way of not just act­ing, but being.

That counts as just one of the the­o­ries advanced over the decades to explain the curi­ous phe­nom­e­non of Bill Mur­ray. The man has also been called upon to explain it him­self now and again, as when an inter­view­er at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val asked what it feels like to be him. His response takes the audi­ence into a guid­ed med­i­ta­tion meant to make every­one lis­ten­ing under­stand how it feels to be them­selves, right here, right now.

Main­tain­ing this sense of the moment, as Mur­ray lat­er explained to Char­lie Rose, is one of the goals of his own life — and pre­sum­ably not an easy goal to achieve for some­one who’s been so famous for so long, a con­di­tion he address­es in the 1988 inter­view ani­mat­ed for Blank on Blank below. “I’m just an obnox­ious guy who can make it appear charm­ing,” he says in sum­ma­tion of his appeal. “That’s what they pay me to do.”

That same year, they paid him $6 mil­lion for his role in Scrooged (play­ing, inci­den­tal­ly, the most obnox­ious char­ac­ter of his career). He’d already been cau­tioned against the dan­gers of such rapid­ly acquired wealth and fame by the fate of his fel­low Chicagoan and SNL alum­nus John Belushi, who by that time had already been dead for five years. Mur­ray had also, he says, under­gone a “spir­i­tu­al change” that showed him “there was some oth­er life to live. It changed the way that I worked,” giv­ing every­thing “a dif­fer­ent pres­ence, a dif­fer­ent ten­sion.” Onscreen, this change cul­mi­nat­ed in the roles he took on after putting broad come­dies behind him begin­ning with 1999’s Rush­more, the break­out fea­ture by an up-and-com­ing direc­tor named Wes Ander­son.

Cast­ing Mur­ray oppo­site the teenage Schwartz­man, Rush­more showed that he could be more affect­ing — and indeed fun­nier — in minor emo­tion­al keys. A few years lat­er, Sofia Cop­po­la’s Lost in Trans­la­tion took him to Japan, where he drew an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion with his per­for­mance from the depths of cul­tur­al and per­son­al dis­ori­en­ta­tion. Today, on Mur­ray’s 70th birth­day, his fans impa­tient­ly await his appear­ances in Ander­son­’s The Paris Dis­patch and Cop­po­la’s On the Rocks, both of which come out next month. Hav­ing long since become an insti­tu­tion (albeit an insis­tent­ly uncon­ven­tion­al and unpre­dictable one) unto him­self, Mur­ray can sure­ly look to the heav­ens and say what, with unchar­ac­ter­is­tic earnest­ness, he told his SNL audi­ence he want­ed to say 33 years ago: “Dad, I did it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Pulled Him­self Out of a Deep, Last­ing Funk: He Took Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice & Lis­tened to the Music of John Prine

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Bill Mur­ray Explains How a 19th-Cen­tu­ry Paint­ing Saved His Life

Art Exhib­it on Bill Mur­ray Opens in the UK

Watch Bill Mur­ray Per­form a Satir­i­cal Anti-Tech­nol­o­gy Rant (1982)

Watch Dan Aykroyd & Bill Mur­ray Goof Off in a New­ly Unearthed Ghost­busters Pro­mo­tion­al Film (1984)

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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A Long, Guided Tour of New York City Captured in Original Color Film (1937)

in Current Affairs, Film, History, Travel | September 18th, 2020

So much clas­sic black and white footage has been dig­i­tal­ly col­orized recent­ly, it’s hard to remem­ber that the East­man Kodak Com­pa­ny’s Kodachrome film debuted way back in 1935.

The above footage of New York City was shot by an unknown enthu­si­ast in and around 1937.

Dick Hoef­s­loot, the Nether­lands-based video­g­ra­ph­er who post­ed it to YouTube after tweak­ing it a bit for motion sta­bi­liza­tion and speed-cor­rec­tion, is not averse to arti­fi­cial­ly col­or­ing his­toric footage using mod­ern soft­ware, but in this case, there was no need.

It was shot in col­or.

If things have a green­ish cast, that’s owing to the film on which it was shot. Three-col­or film, which added blue to the red-green mix, was more expen­sive and more com­mon­ly used lat­er on.

Hoefsloot’s best guess is that this film was shot by a mem­ber of a wealthy fam­i­ly. It’s con­fi­dent­ly made, but also seems to be a home movie of sorts, giv­en the pres­ence of an old­er woman who appears a half dozen times on this self-guid­ed tour of New York sites.

There’s plen­ty here that remains famil­iar: the Wool­worth Build­ing and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, trussed up Christ­mas trees propped against makeshift side­walk stands, the New York Pub­lic Library’s lions, Patience and For­ti­tude.

Oth­er aspects are more a mat­ter of nos­tal­gia.

Over in Times Square, Bull­dog Drum­mond Comes Back star­ring John Bar­ry­more was play­ing at the Cri­te­ri­on (now the site of a Gap store), while the Para­mount The­ater, now a Hard Rock Cafe, played host to True Con­fes­sion with Bar­ry­more and Car­ol Lom­bard.

Oys­ters were still food for the mass­es, though records show that local­ly har­vest­ed ones had been deemed too pol­lut­ed for human con­sump­tion for at least a decade.

A bag of peanuts cost 15¢. A new Oldsmo­bile went for about $914 plus city tax.

Laun­dry could be seen strung between build­ings (still can be on occa­sion), but peo­ple dressed up care­ful­ly for shop­ping trips and oth­er excur­sions around town. Heav­en for­bid they step out­side with­out a hat.

Though the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty makes an appear­ance, the film doesn’t depict the neigh­bor­hoods where new and estab­lished immi­grants were known to con­gre­gate. Had the cam­era trav­eled uptown to the Apol­lo—by 1937, the largest employ­er of black the­atri­cal work­ers in the coun­try and the sole venue in the city in which they were hired for back­stage positions—the over­all com­po­si­tion would have proved less white.

The film, which was uploaded a lit­tle over a year ago, has recent­ly attract­ed a fresh vol­ley of atten­tion, lead­ing Hoef­s­loot to reis­sue his request for view­ers to “refrain from (post­ing) polit­i­cal, reli­gious or racist-relat­ed com­ments.”

In this fraught elec­tion year, we hope you will par­don a New York­er for point­ing out the legion of com­menters flout­ing this polite request, so eager are they to fan the fires of intol­er­ance by express­ing a pref­er­ence for the “way things used to be.”

With all due respect, there aren’t many peo­ple left who were present at the time, who can accu­rate­ly recall and describe New York City in 1937. Our hunch is that those who can are not spend­ing such time as remains rab­ble-rous­ing on YouTube.

So enjoy this his­toric win­dow on the past, then take a deep breath and con­front the present that’s reveal­ing itself in the YouTube com­ments.

A chrono­log­i­cal list of New York City sites and cit­i­zens appear­ing in this film cir­ca 1937:

00:00 Low­er Man­hat­tan sky­line seen from Brook­lyn Heights Prom­e­nade

00:45 Stat­en Island steam fer­ry

01:05 RMS Carinthia

01:10 Old three-stack pass.ship, maybe USS Leviathan

01:28 One-stack pass.ship, name?

01:50 HAL SS Volen­dam or SS Veen­dam II

02:18 West­field II steam fer­ry to Stat­en Island, built 1862?

02:30 Floyd Ben­nett Air­field, North Beach Air Ser­vice inc. hangar

02:43 Hoey Air Ser­vices hangar at  F.B. Air­field

02:55 Ladies board mono­plane, Stin­son S Junior, NC10883, built 1931

03:15 Fly­ing over New York: Cen­tral Park & Rock­e­feller Cen­ter

03:19 Empire State Build­ing (ESB)

03:22 Chrysler build­ing in the dis­tance

03:26 Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty island

03:30 Air­craft, Waco ZQC‑6, built 1936

03:47 Reg.no. NC16234 becomes read­able

04:00 Arrival of the “Fly Eddie Lyons” air­craft

04:18 Dutch made Fokker 1, packed

04:23 Dou­glas DC3 “Dako­ta”, also packed, new

04:28 Green mono- or tri-engine air­craft, type?

04:40 DC3 again. DC3’s flew first on 17 Dec.1935

04:44 Back side of Wool­worth Build­ing

05:42 Broad­way at Bowl­ing Green

05:12 Brook­lyn across East Riv­er, view from Pier 11

05:13 Water plane, Grum­man G‑21A Goose

05:38 Street with bus, Stan­dard Oil Build­ing ®

05:40 Truck, mod­el?

05:42 Broad­way at Bowl­ing Green

05:46 Old truck, “Engels”, mod­el?

05:48 Flag USA with 48 stars!

05:50 Broad­way at Bowl­ing Green, DeSto­to Sun­shine cab 1936

05:52 Truck, “Bier Mard Bros”, mod­el?

05:56 Ford Mod­el AA truck 1930

05:58 Open truck, mod­el?

06:05 Stan­dard Oil Build­ing

06:25 Bus 366 & Ford Mod­el A 1930

06:33 South Street & Coen­ties Slip

06:35 See 07:19, Black car?

06:45 Cities Ser­vice Build­ing at 70 Pine St. right. Left: see 07:12

06:48 Small ves­sels in the East Riv­er

06:50 Owned by Har­ry F. Rear­don

07:05 Shack on Coen­ties Slip, Pier 5

07:12 City Bank-Farm­ers Trust Build­ing, 20 Exchange Place

07:15 Oys­ter bar, near Coen­ties Slip

07:19 South Street, look­ing North towards the old Seaman’s Church Insti­tute

07:31 Hol­land Amer­i­ca Line, Volendam‑I, built 1922

07:32 Chrysler Ply­mouth P2 De Luxe

07:34 Oys­ter ven­dor

08:05 Ven­dor shows oys­ter in pot

08:16 Wall st.; Many cars, mod­els?

08:30 Look­ing down Wall st.

08:52 More cars, mod­els?

09:00 Near the Erie Fer­ry, 1934/35 Ford s.48 De Luxe

09:02 Rows of Christ­mas tree sales, loca­tion?

09:15 Erie Rail­road build­ing, loca­tion? Quay 21? Taxi, mod­el?

09:23 1934 Dodge DS

09:25 See 09:48

09:27 Bal­ti­more and Ohio (B&O) Rail­road

09:29 Clyde Mal­lo­ry Lines

09:48  South end of West Side High­way

09:49, 10:08, 10:11, 10:45 Loca­tion?

10:25 Hen­ry Hud­son Park­way

11:30 George Wash­ing­ton Bridge with­out the Low­er Lev­el

12:07 Pres­by­ter­ian Hos­pi­tal, Wash­ing­ton Heights

12:15 Rock­e­feller Insti­tute of Med­ical Research

12:49 New York Hos­pi­tal at 68th St. & East Riv­er

13:14 dit­to

13:35 dit­to

13:42 Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

14:51 Rock­e­fel­la Plaza & RCA build­ing

16:33 Saint Patrick­’s Cathe­dral

16:50 Pub­lic Library

17:24 Panoram­ic view, from ESB

17:45 RCA Build­ing, 30 Rock­e­feller Plaza

18:16 Orig­i­nal Penn Sta­tion

19:27 Movie True Con­fes­sion, rel. 24 Dec.1937

19:30 Slop­py Joes

20:12 Neon lights & Xmas

26:34 Her­ald Square

29:48 Police Emer­gency Ser­vice (B&W)

31:00 SS Nor­mandie, French Line, Pier 88

32:06 RMS Queen Mary, White Star Line, Pier 92

32:43 Depar­ture Queen Mary

33:45 Ital­ian Line, Pier 84, Ter­mi­nal, dd.1935

34:00 SS Con­te Di Savoia, Ital­ian Line, Pier 84

34:25 Peanut sell­er, near the piers

34:35 Feed­ing the pid­geons

34:52 SS Nor­mandie, exte­ri­or & on deck

35:30 View from Pier 88

35:59 Inte­ri­or

37:06 From Pier 88

37:23 North­ern, East­ern, South­ern or West­ern Prince, built 1929

37:32 Tug, William C. Gaynor

38:20 Depar­ture

38:38 Blue Riband!

39:15 Tugs push Nor­mandie into fair­way

39:50 Under own steam.

40:00 Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty

40:15 SS Nor­mandie leaves NYC

View more of Dick Hoefsloot’s his­toric uploads on his YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

A New Inter­ac­tive Map Shows All Four Mil­lion Build­ings That Exist­ed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

The Lost Neigh­bor­hood Buried Under New York City’s Cen­tral Park

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

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