Orson Welles’ Final Moments

Above, you can watch Orson Welles’ last inter­view and pub­lic appear­ance. The clip brings you back to Octo­ber 10, 1985, when the great film­mak­er, then 70 years old, appeared on the Merv Grif­fin show and talked a good deal about aging and his aging gen­er­a­tion. Just two hours lat­er, Welles would die of a heart attack at his Los Ange­les home. The clip is added to our YouTube Favorites in a sen­ti­men­tal kind of way.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The War of the Worlds on Pod­cast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riv­et­ed A Nation

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Bob Dylan at The Super Bowl

As you’ll recall, we men­tioned a few days ago that Bob Dylan allowed “Blowin’ in the Wind” to be used in a British com­mer­cial. Nev­er before had Dylan allowed that to hap­pen, at least in Britain. For one of our read­ers, there was a small sil­ver lin­ing. The com­pa­ny using the clas­sic song (the Co-oper­a­tive Group) has some clear virtues. “The Co-op is eth­i­cal; The Co-op sup­ports Fair­Trade; The Co-op is still a co-oper­a­tive; They sure ain’t Victoria’s Secret.”

Fast for­ward a few days, and we strange­ly find Dylan doing a Super Bowl ad for Pep­si — not the worst com­pa­ny in the world, but also not the best. Above, Dylan and Will.i.am (Black Eye Peas) sing a song that they wrote specif­i­cal­ly for the Super Bowl ad, and you might even­tu­al­ly find it being sold on iTunes. I can hard­ly wait.

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Salvador Dali on “What’s My Line?”

What’s My Line? aired on CBS from 1950 to 1967, mak­ing it the longest-run­ning game show in Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion his­to­ry. Dur­ing its eigh­teen sea­sons, the show fea­tured hun­dreds of celebri­ties & VIPs. Above, you can watch Sal­vador Dali in action. You can also rewind the video tape and check out Alfred Hitch­cock, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Grou­cho Marx, Carl Sand­burg, among oth­ers. For more oldies and good­ies, check out Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio & The War of the Worlds on Pod­cast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riv­et­ed A Nation.

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Bugs Bunny in The Big Snooze (1946)

On the lighter side for a sleepy Sun­day .…

“The Big Snooze” (1946) was the last car­toon that ani­ma­tion direc­tor Bob Clam­pett ever worked on for Warn­er Broth­ers. The title? It’s an obvi­ous play on the Ray­mond Chan­dler nov­el, The Big Sleep, which was also turned into a film (star­ring Bog­a­rt and Bacall) in 1946. And the sleep­ing pill scene? Well, it was cen­sored on tele­vi­sion for some time. The clip can oth­er­wise be bought on The Looney Tunes Gold­en Col­lec­tion. For now, here it goes.

Steven Spielberg Admits Swallowing a Transistor to Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger

In 1979, Andy Warhol spent $40,000 on a broad­cast-qual­i­ty cam­era and start­ed dab­bling in cre­at­ing tele­vi­sion pro­grams that he aired on Man­hat­tan pub­lic access cable chan­nels. (Get more on the sto­ry here.) One episode fea­tured Warhol, Bian­ca Jag­ger and Steven Spiel­berg sim­ply hang­ing out on a bed. And here’s how their con­ver­sa­tion went down:

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Woody Allen on The Dick Cavett Show Circa 1970

Bad clothes, real­ly bad TV sets, not so good hair, and some briefly good com­e­dy — that’s what you get when Woody Allen hits the Dick Cavett Show in or around 1970. Watch it below, and get oth­er seg­ments here, here, and here. And find it on our YouTube Favorites.

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The Wire: Four Seasons in Four Minutes

Some have put it on the lev­el of a Tol­stoy nov­el. Oth­ers have made the com­par­i­son to Dick­ens. No mat­ter how you slice it, The Wire is TV at its best. Below, we have post­ed a fast-mov­ing sum­ma­ry of the first four sea­sons, which was made in the same for­mat as the viral video The Nine Minute Sopra­nos. The fifth and final sea­son of The Wire is not includ­ed here. But that’s just as well. If you want to watch the series in full, you don’t want to know how it ends. Actu­al­ly, on sec­ond thought, you may not want to watch any of this. Move for­ward at your own risk.  

 

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Joss Whedon: The Death of Orson Welles, The History of Women and Beyond

One of my friends from way back, Sheer­ly Avni, has just post­ed an inter­view with Joss Whe­don, who has now dom­i­nat­ed in four media cat­e­gories: film (Seren­i­ty), tele­vi­sion (Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er), comics (Run­aways, The Aston­ish­ing X‑Men) and final­ly the inter­net. (Dr. Hor­ri­ble’s Sin­ga­long Blog). The inter­view was con­duct­ed for Moth­er Jones, so there’s a lot about pol­i­tics, gen­der, the writ­ers’ strike, and, yes, TV and film. It runs about 38 min­utes. Have a lis­ten.

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