Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton Go Toe to Toe (Almost) in a Hilarious Boxing Scene Mash Up from Their Classic Silent Films

in Comedy, Film, Sports | October 9th, 2020

Coke or Pep­si?

Box­ers or briefs?

Char­lie Chap­lin or Buster Keaton?

A dif­fi­cult choice that usu­al­ly boils down to per­son­al taste…

In the case of the two silent screen greats, they evinced dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties, but both were pos­sessed of phys­i­cal grace, a tremen­dous work eth­ic, and the abil­i­ty to make audi­ences root for the lit­tle guy.

Their endur­ing influ­ence on phys­i­cal com­e­dy is evi­dent in the box­ing scene mash up above, which pulls from Keaton’s star turn in 1926’s Bat­tling But­ler and Chaplin’s wide­ly cel­e­brat­ed City Lights from 1931.

Even cut up and spliced back togeth­er in alter­nat­ing shots, it’s a mas­ter class on build­ing antic­i­pa­tion, defy­ing expec­ta­tions, and the humor of rep­e­ti­tion.

Both films’ plots hinge on a mild fel­low going to extra­or­di­nary lengths to prove him­self wor­thy of the girl he loves.

Chap­lin, besot­ted with a blind flower-sell­er, is drawn into the ring by the prospect of prize mon­ey, which he would use to cov­er her unpaid rent.

His oppo­nent is played by Hank Mann, the brains behind the Key­stone Cops peri­od who went on to work with Jer­ry Lewis.

The pas de trois between the ref and the two box­ers rep­re­sents the pin­na­cle of Chaplin’s long affin­i­ty for the sport, fol­low­ing 1914’s Key­stone short, The Knock­out and 1915’s The Cham­pi­on.

Bat­tling But­ler is built on a case of delib­er­ate­ly mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty, after Keaton’s mil­que­toast rich boy impress­es his work­ing class sweetheart’s fam­i­ly by allow­ing them to think he is a famous box­er whose name he inci­den­tal­ly shares.

The fight scenes were filmed in LA’s brand new Olympic Audi­to­ri­um, aka the Punch Palace, which went on to serve as a loca­tion for the more recent box­ing clas­sics Rocky (1976) and Mil­lion Dol­lar Baby (2004).

The edi­tor who thought to score this mashup to Mari­achi Internacional’s cov­er of Zor­ba El Griego is cer­tain­ly a con­tender in their own right, but read­ers, what we real­ly want to know is in this cham­pi­onship round between Chap­lin and Keaton, who would you declare the win­ner?

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Dis­cov­er the Cin­e­mat­ic & Comedic Genius of Char­lie Chap­lin with 60+ Free Movies Online

What Would the World of Char­lie Chap­lin Look Like in Col­or?: Watch a Col­or­ful­ly Restored Ver­sion of A Night at the Show (1915)

A Super­cut of Buster Keaton’s Most Amaz­ing Stunts

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

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Tony Hawk & Architectural Historian Iain Borden Tell the Story of How Skateboarding Found a New Use for Cities & Architecture

in Architecture, Sports | July 29th, 2020

Would­n’t we enjoy see­ing our cities like an archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an, in com­mand of deep knowl­edge about the tech­nol­o­gy, ide­ol­o­gy, and aes­thet­ics of the build­ings we pass by every day? For most of us, this would huge­ly enrich our expe­ri­ence of the urban envi­ron­ment. But then so, less obvi­ous­ly, would see­ing our cities like a skate­board­er, in com­mand of deep knowl­edge about how to glide, jump, and bounce along the streets, the build­ings, and all the myr­i­ad pieces of infra­struc­ture as a surfer rides the waves. The archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an learns the city with his mind; the skater learns the city, no less painstak­ing­ly, with his body.

The Vox video above brings mind and body come togeth­er in the per­sons of Iain Bor­den, author of Skate­board­ing and the City: A Com­plete His­to­ry, and Tony Hawk, to whom even those whol­ly igno­rant of skate­board­ing need no intro­duc­tion. Their com­ple­men­tary inter­views reveal the his­to­ry of mod­ern skate­board­ing through the sport’s “leg­endary spots”: pub­lic-school cam­pus­es, aban­doned swim­ming pools, dry drainage ditch­es, for­got­ten sec­tions of con­crete pipe. In the main this selec­tion reflects the high­ly sub­ur­ban­ized 1970s in which skate­boards first came to pop­u­lar­i­ty in the Unit­ed States. But at its out­er lim­its, such as the Mt. Baldy pipeline in north­ern Cal­i­for­nia, it also shows how far skaters will go in search of the ide­al place to ride.

Though pur­pose-build skate parks do exist (their num­bers kept low by for­mi­da­ble insur­ance chal­lenges), seri­ous skaters pre­fer spaces not express­ly designed for skat­ing. This is thanks in large part to the inno­va­tions of a skater with less wider-world name recog­ni­tion than Hawk, but no less influ­ence with­in the sport: Natas Kau­pas. Hawk remem­bers the thoughts trig­gered by footage of the young Kau­pas skat­ing mas­ter­ful­ly through his neigh­bor­hood in the 1987 film Wheels of Fire: “Wow, you can skate curbs like that? You can skate bench­es? You can skate fire hydrants? The whole world is a skate park now.” Sud­den­ly, Bor­den adds, “you did­n’t need to be in Cal­i­for­nia, or in the Ari­zona desert, or in Flori­da any­more. You could be any­where.”

Review­ing Bor­den’s Skate­board­ing and the City, Jack Lay­ton in Urban Stud­ies high­lights its his­to­ry of “how the assem­blage of mate­ri­als that makes up cities has been – in count­less ways – re-imag­ined by the skate­board­er to cre­ate accel­er­a­tion, rota­tion, fric­tion and flow.” It’s easy to for­get, Lay­ton writes, that “along with facil­i­tat­ing com­merce, trans­port and habi­ta­tion, cities can be spaces that facil­i­tate play, exhil­a­ra­tion and plea­sure.” Despite often hav­ing been regard­ed as pub­lic nui­sances, skate­board­ers are “a con­stant reminder that our cities are cre­ative and rich places,” says Bor­den. With the excep­tion of the skate parks secret­ly con­struct­ed in hid­den urban spaces across the world, skaters, of course, don’t build the city — but they do show us some of its untapped poten­tial.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ful­ly Flared

3 Icon­ic Paint­ings by Fri­da Kahlo Get Reborn as Vans Skate Shoes

Sax­o­phon­ist Plays into Large Gas Pipes & Then Uses the Echo to Accom­pa­ny Him­self

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Beau­ty of Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­ture: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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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Michael Jordan’s “The Last Dance” and Hero Worship: A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion (#50)

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sports, Television | July 2nd, 2020

The 10-part ESPN doc­u­men­tary dis­sect­ing Michael Jor­dan and the Bulls’ six cham­pi­onships has pro­vid­ed some much need­ed sports dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, rop­ing in even sports haters with a mix of game high­lights and behind-the-scenes dra­ma.

Your hosts Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er are joined by Seth from The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life to inter­ro­gate the event: Was it actu­al­ly worth 10 hours of our time? Did its “time-jump­ing” struc­ture work? Its its treat­ment of Jor­dan real­ly “hagiog­ra­phy” sanc­ti­fy­ing the man, or is the pic­ture of grudge-hold­ing ultra-com­pet­i­tive­ness actu­al­ly pret­ty repul­sive? Why was he like that? Why are sports amenable to cre­at­ing cul­tur­al icons out of its heroes in a way that, say, physics isn’t? Are we going to see many more of these long-form treat­ments of sports heroes?

For more dis­cus­sion, here are some arti­cles we looked at:

If you enjoyed this, check out our episode #25 with sports­cast­er Dave Rev­sine.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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 or start with the first episode.

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Stream All 18 Hours of Ken Burns’ Baseball for Free on What Would Have Been Opening Day

in Sports, Television | March 26th, 2020

Base­ball sea­son won’t start today, on what would have been Open Day. So here’s your next best bet. As Sam Barsan­ti writes at AV Club, “PBS and the world’s pre­em­i­nent direc­tor of extreme­ly watch­able and extreme­ly long doc­u­men­taries have a spe­cial treat: The entire­ty of Ken Burns’ Base­ball—over 18 hours—is now avail­able to stream for free on the PBS web­site and all of its relat­ed apps.”

It’s no coin­ci­dence that Burns’ doc­u­men­tary becomes free dur­ing COVID-19. On Twit­ter, Burns adds: “With events can­celed & so much closed, I asked @PBS to stream BASEBALL for free so we can par­tic­i­pate in the nation­al pas­time togeth­er. Watch at the link below or on any stream­ing device. And please look out for those with greater needs. Play ball.”

Stream the videos 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:

Free: Austin City Lim­its Opens Up Video Archives Dur­ing COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

Watch Curat­ed Playlists of Exper­i­men­tal Videos & Films to Get You Through COVID-19: Miran­da July, Jan Švankma­jer, Guy Maddin & More

The Met Opera Stream­ing Free Operas Online to Get You Through COVID-19

Bruce Spring­steen Releas­es Live Con­cert Film Online: Watch “Lon­don Call­ing: Live In Hyde Park” and Prac­tice Self Dis­tanc­ing

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Sportscaster Dave Revsine (Big 10 Network) Joins Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast to Discuss the Role of Sports in Pop Culture

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sports | January 2nd, 2020

How is spec­ta­tor sports dif­fer­ent from oth­er types of enter­tain­ment? Dave Rev­sine (lead stu­dio host for the Big Ten Net­work and for­mer ESPN anchor) joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss the var­i­ous sources of appeal, team iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, exist­ing in a sports-filled world as a non-fan, watch­ing vs. play­ing, human inter­est sto­ries, sports films, and more.

Some of the arti­cles we looked at to pre­pare includ­ed:

The first two links above were part of a series of 2016 edi­to­ri­als in the Wash­ing­ton Post coin­cid­ing with March Mad­ness. As the whole series is def­i­nite­ly worth a look, just fol­low the links at the bot­tom of those arti­cles.

Dave wrote a book you might want to look at called The Open­ing Kick­off: The Tumul­tuous Birth of a Foot­ball Nation. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @BTNDaveRevsine.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear 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 or start with the first episode.

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Watch Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig Taking Batting Practice in Strikingly Restored Footage (1931)

in Film, History, Sports | September 13th, 2019

How would Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and oth­er famous ballplay­ers of bygone eras fare if put on the dia­mond today? Vari­a­tions on that ques­tion tend to come up in con­ver­sa­tion among enthu­si­asts of base­ball and its his­to­ry, and dif­fer­ent peo­ple bring dif­fer­ent kinds of evi­dence to bear in search of an answer: sta­tis­tics, eye­wit­ness accounts, analo­gies between par­tic­u­lar his­tor­i­cal play­ers and cur­rent ones. But the fact remains that none of us have ever actu­al­ly seen the likes of Ruth, who played his last pro­fes­sion­al game in 1935, and Gehrig, who did so in 1939, in their prime. But now we can at least get a lit­tle clos­er by watch­ing the film clip above, which shows both of the titan­ic Yan­kees at bat­ting prac­tice on April 11, 1931.

What’s more, it shows them mov­ing at real-life speed. “Fox Movi­etone sound cam­eras made slow-motion cap­tures of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at bat­ting prac­tice dur­ing an exhi­bi­tion prac­tice in Brook­lyn, New York,” writes uploader Guy Jones (whose oth­er base­ball videos include Ruth hit­ting a home run on open­ing day the same year and Ruth’s last appear­ance at bat a decade lat­er). “With mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, we can wit­ness this footage adjust­ed to a nor­mal speed which results in a very high fram­er­ate.”

In oth­er words, the film shows Ruth and Gehrig not just mov­ing in the very same way they did in real life, but cap­tured with a smooth­ness uncom­mon in news­reel footage from the 1930s. For com­par­i­son, Jones includes at the end of the video “more footage of the prac­tice (shot at typ­i­cal fps) and the orig­i­nal un-edit­ed slow-mo cap­tures.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, what this film reveals does­n’t impress observers of mod­ern base­ball. “Ruth and Gehrig in no way look like a mod­ern ballplay­er,” writes The Big Lead­’s Kyle Koster. “Ruth is off-bal­ance, falling into his swing. Gehrig rou­tine­ly lifts his back foot off the ground. Again, it’s bat­ting prac­tice so the com­pet­i­tive juices weren’t flow­ing. But even by that stan­dard, the whole exer­cise looks slop­py and inef­fi­cient.” Cut4’s Jake Mintz gets harsh­er, as well as more tech­ni­cal: “Tell me Ruth’s cocka­mamie swing mechan­ics would enable him to hit a 98-mph heater.” As for the Iron Horse, his “hack is a lit­tle bet­ter,” but still “absurd­ly low” by today’s stan­dards. It goes to show, Mintz writes, that “these two leg­ends, while unde­ni­ably tran­scen­dent in their time, would be good Double‑A hit­ters at best if they played today.” We evolve, our tech­nolo­gies evolve, and so, it seems, do the games we play.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Home Movies of Duke Elling­ton Play­ing Base­ball (And How Base­ball Coined the Word “Jazz”)

Read Online Haru­ki Murakami’s New Essay on How a Base­ball Game Launched His Writ­ing Career

Fritz Lang’s M: The Restored Ver­sion of the Clas­sic 1931 Film

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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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Arnold Schoenberg, Avant-Garde Composer, Creates a System of Symbols for Notating Tennis Matches

in Music, Sports | July 10th, 2019

This time each sum­mer, as the con­clu­sion of this year’s fort­night-long cham­pi­onship at Wim­ble­don approach­es, even the most pri­vate of the ten­nis enthu­si­asts in all of our cir­cles make them­selves known. Love of that par­tic­u­lar game runs down all walks of life, but seems to exist in par­tic­u­lar­ly high con­cen­tra­tions among cul­tur­al cre­ators: not just writ­ers like Mar­tin Amis, Geoff Dyer, and David Fos­ter Wal­lace, all of whose bod­ies of work con­tain elo­quent thoughts on ten­nis, but com­posers of music as well.

Take Arnold Schoen­berg, who well into his old age con­tin­ued not just to cre­ate the inno­v­a­tive music for which we remem­ber him, but to spend time on the court as well. Though born in Vien­na, Schoen­berg even­tu­al­ly land­ed in the right place to enjoy ten­nis on the reg­u­lar: south­ern Cal­i­for­nia, to which he fled in 1933 after being informed of how inhos­pitable his home­land would soon become to per­sons of Jew­ish her­itage. Few famous com­posers of that time had less in com­mon than Schoen­berg and George Gersh­win, but their shared enjoy­ment of ten­nis made them into fast part­ners.

Accord­ing to Howard Pol­lack­’s life of Gersh­win, fel­low com­pos­er Albert Sendrey left a “reveal­ing account” of one of the week­ly match­es between “the thir­ty-eight-year-old Gersh­win and the six­ty-two-year-old Schoen­berg, con­trast­ing the alter­nate­ly ‘ner­vous’ and ‘non­cha­lant,’ ‘relent­less’ and ‘chival­rous’ Gersh­win, ‘play­ing to an audi­ence,’ with the ‘over­ly eager’ and ‘chop­py’ Schoen­berg who ‘has learned to shut his mind against pub­lic opin­ion.’ ” Any par­al­lels between play­ing style and musi­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty are, of course, entire­ly coin­ci­den­tal.

The cere­bral nature of Schoen­berg’s com­po­si­tions may not sug­gest a tem­pera­ment suit­ed for phys­i­cal activ­i­ty of any kind, but even in Aus­tria Schoen­berg had been a keen sports­man. And as a fair few ten­nis-lov­ing writ­ers have explained, the game does pos­sess an intel­lec­tu­al side, and one made more eas­i­ly ana­lyz­able, at least in the­o­ry, by a sys­tem of Schoen­berg’s inven­tion. “Toward the end of his life, Schoen­berg — always fas­ci­nat­ed by rules, analy­sis, and inven­tion — would come up with a form of nota­tion to tran­scribe the ten­nis match­es of his ath­lete son Ronald,” writes Mark Berry in Arnold Schoen­berg. You can see this sys­tem laid out on the sheet above, recent­ly post­ed on Twit­ter by Hen­ry Gough-Coop­er.

The marks look vague­ly sim­i­lar to those of cer­tain dance nota­tion sys­tems, a nat­ur­al enough resem­blance con­sid­er­ing the kind of foot­work ten­nis demands. But ide­al­ly, Schoen­berg’s nota­tion would also have ren­dered a game of ten­nis as com­pre­hen­si­ble as one of chess — anoth­er pur­suit to which Schoen­berg applied his mind. He came up with “an expand­ed four-play­er, ten-square ver­sion of the tra­di­tion­al game,” writes Berry, “involv­ing super­pow­ers and less­er pow­ers all com­pelled to forge alliances, with new pieces such as air­planes, tanks, sub­marines, and so forth.” Schoen­berg’s “coali­tion chess,” as he called it, seems to have caught on no more than his ten­nis nota­tion sys­tem did. But then, the man who pio­neered the twelve-tone tech­nique nev­er did go in for mass accep­tance.

via and Hen­ry Gough-Coop­er on Twit­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arnold Schoen­berg Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn, Paper-Cut “Wheel Chart” to Visu­al­ize His 12-Tone Tech­nique

Vi Hart Uses Her Video Mag­ic to Demys­ti­fy Stravin­sky and Schoenberg’s 12-Tone Com­po­si­tions

John Coltrane Draws a Pic­ture Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­ics of Music

Nota­tions: John Cage Pub­lish­es a Book of Graph­ic Musi­cal Scores, Fea­tur­ing Visu­al­iza­tions of Works by Leonard Bern­stein, Igor Stravin­sky, The Bea­t­les & More (1969)

Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son Play Ten­nis, 1969

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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 Wild 40-Minute Race Down Alpe D’Huez

in Sports | June 16th, 2019

Damien Oton, win­ner of last sum­mer’s Megavalanche, mount­ed a cam­era on his hel­met and record­ed his race down Alpe D’Huez. Buck­le in, and enjoy the exhil­a­rat­ing wild ride. Once you start, it’s hard to stop.

via Metafil­ter

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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