Johnny Depp Reads Letters from Hunter S. Thompson

in Film, Literature | April 13th, 2010

Back in 1998, Hunter S. Thomp­son’s most famous piece of Gonzo jour­nal­ism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was brought to the sil­ver screen, with John­ny Depp play­ing a lead role. From this point for­ward, Depp and Thomp­son became fast friends. (Indeed, Depp would end up pay­ing for Thomp­son’s elab­o­rate funer­al, which involved shoot­ing the writer’s ash­es out of a can­non to the tune of Nor­man Green­baum’s Spir­it in the Sky and Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tam­bourine Man.) Above we fea­ture John­ny read­ing out loud some let­ters he received from Hunter. The let­ters are very Thomp­son-esque, which means, among things, they’re NOT SAFE for work! Part 2 can be found here, and Part 3 here.

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

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

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Samuel Beckett Speaks

in Film, Literature | April 13th, 2010

Samuel Beck­ett gave us Wait­ing for Godot, one of the great plays of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Today, he would have turned 104 years old. He died back in 1989, and just two years before that, the pub­lic­i­ty-shy play­wright was cap­tured in some rare footage that appeared in an Amer­i­can doc­u­men­tary called “Wait­ing for Beck­ett.” The images and voic­es can be a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to make out, but it’s worth giv­ing this clip a lit­tle bit of time to unfold. Mean­while, you can find more film clips involv­ing Beck­ett (as writer and direc­tor) on UBUWeb, the avant-garde media site we fea­tured here last month.

Thanks Mike for send­ing this one our way.

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Allen Ginsberg on a Tugboat Ride (1969)

in Literature | April 12th, 2010

via The New York­er

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William Faulkner Reads from As I Lay Dying

in Audio Books, Literature | April 5th, 2010

William Faulkn­er’s As I Lay Dying is wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the great Amer­i­can nov­els. Quite an accom­plish­ment, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that Faulkn­er wrote the nov­el in six weeks while work­ing at a pow­er plant in 1929–30. Read more about his day jobs here.

Thanks to Harper­Collins, you can now lis­ten to Faulkn­er, him­self, read­ing from his mas­ter­piece: .au file (4.4 Mb), .gsm file (0.9 Mb), .ra file (0.5 Mb). The audio can be a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to make out at times. But you can read right along with the text in Google Books. Enjoy. Thanks MS.

For more audio clas­sics, check out our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

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“April is the Cruellest Month…”

in Literature, Poetry | March 31st, 2010


T.S. Eliot reads from The Waste­land, one of the great poems of the last cen­tu­ry. It begins famous­ly:

APRIL is the cru­ellest month, breed­ing
Lilacs out of the dead land, mix­ing
Mem­o­ry and desire, stir­ring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Win­ter kept us warm, cov­er­ing
Earth in for­get­ful snow, feed­ing
A lit­tle life with dried tubers.
Sum­mer sur­prised us, com­ing over the Starn­berg­ersee
With a show­er of rain; we stopped in the colon­nade,
And went on in sun­light, into the Hof­garten,
And drank cof­fee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were chil­dren, stay­ing at the arch­duke’s,
My cous­in’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was fright­ened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the moun­tains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the win­ter.

Get the full text here.

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Kurt Vonnegut Reads from Slaughterhouse-Five

in Audio Books, Literature, Sci Fi | March 31st, 2010

Kurt Von­negut’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five was pub­lished back in 1969, and the anti-war sci fi nov­el quick­ly became a clas­sic. (The book now appears, for exam­ple, on Time Mag­a­zine’s list of All Time 100 Nov­els.) Whether you’ve read the nov­el or not, you’ll want to check this out. Harper­Collins has post­ed online a record­ing of Von­negut him­self read­ing a lengthy pas­sage from the work. And he does it with the “casu­al irony that com­ple­ments the nov­el­’s won­der­ful­ly eccen­tric tone.” You can stream Von­negut’s read­ing in the fol­low­ing for­mats:  .au for­mat (4.5 Mb), .gsm for­mat (900 Kb), .ra for­mat ( Mb). (Sor­ry a straight­for­ward mp3 is not avail­able.) Also, if you want some more Von­negut, feel free to down­load his 1962 sci fi short sto­ry, 2BR02B, which is oth­er­wise list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Note: Audible.com offers a ver­sion of Slaugh­ter­house-Five nar­rat­ed by actor/writer Ethan Hawke. You can down­load it (or any anoth­er oth­er book) for free if you start a free 14 day tri­al. It has no strings attached. Get some more basic details here.

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Aldous Huxley Warns Against Dictatorship in America

in History, Literature | March 29th, 2010

Warn­ings of dic­ta­tor­ship are noth­ing new in Amer­i­ca. We have them now, and we’ve had them before, and we’ve even had them come from the intel­li­gentsia at times. Above, Aldous Hux­ley, author of Brave New World (get free text here), talks with Mike Wal­lace in 1958 — smack in the mid­dle of the Cold War — about the major threats to Amer­i­can free­dom. Who were the vil­lains? Not elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives who passed laws with a major­i­ty in Con­gress. No, it was a dif­fer­ent set of char­ac­ters: over­pop­u­la­tion, bureau­cra­cy, pro­pa­gan­da, drugs, adver­tis­ing, and, yes, tele­vi­sion. Part 1 of the inter­view appears above, and you can con­tin­ue with Part 2, and Part 3. For more inter­views from The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1957–1960), please revis­it our ear­li­er piece. You’ll find some more thought pro­vok­ing inter­views there (and lots of cig­a­rette ped­dling).

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

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

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Marlon Brando Opens Up to Tennessee Williams

in Film, Literature, Theatre | March 27th, 2010

I had no idea that Mar­lon Bran­do was much of a writer, but this 1955 let­ter to Ten­nessee Williams is superb. Per­haps I just can’t help iden­ti­fy­ing him with Stan­ley Kowal­s­ki of the “Napoleon­ic code,” Stel­la!” and “Hoity-toity, describ­in’ me like a ape.” Espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing is his atti­tude towards suc­cess. (Note some of the lan­guage is a lit­tle strong/racy):

I have been afraid for you some­times, because suc­cess sings a dead­ly lul­la­by to most peo­ple. Suc­cess is a real and sub­tle whore, who would like noth­ing bet­ter than to catch you sleep­ing and bite your cock off. You have been as brave as any­body I’ve known, and it is com­fort­ing to think about it. You prob­a­bly don’t think of your­self as brave because nobody who real­ly has courage does, but I know you are and I get food from that.

This pas­sage echoes Williams’ own views on suc­cess, espe­cial­ly his beau­ti­ful (and iron­i­cal­ly inspir­ing) essay On a Street­car Named Suc­cess, writ­ten eight years ear­li­er:

It is nev­er alto­geth­er too late, unless you embrace the Bitch God­dess, as William James called her, with both arms and find in her smoth­er­ing caress­es exact­ly what the home­sick lit­tle boy in you always want­ed, absolute pro­tec­tion and utter effort­less­ness. Secu­ri­ty is a kind of death, I think, and it can come to you in a storm of roy­al­ty checks beside a kid­ney-shaped pool in Bev­er­ly Hills or any­where at all that is removed from the con­di­tions that made you an artist, if that’s what you are or were intend­ed to be. Ask any­one who has expe­ri­enced the kind of suc­cess I am talk­ing about–What good is it? Per­haps to get an hon­est answer you will have to give him a shot of truth-serum but the word he will final­ly groan is unprint­able in gen­teel pub­li­ca­tions.

You’ll find the rest of Bran­do’s let­ter (includ­ing an image of the orig­i­nal) — which includes reflec­tions on actors Anna Mag­nani and Burt Lan­cast­er — here.

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Insti­tute for the Study of Psy­cho­analy­sis and Cul­ture. He also par­tic­i­pates in The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, a pod­cast con­sist­ing of infor­mal dis­cus­sions about philo­soph­i­cal texts by three phi­los­o­phy grad­u­ate school dropouts.

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