A Long-Lost Soviet Adaptation of The Lord of the Rings Resurfaces on YouTube–and Tolkien Fans Rejoice (1991)

in Literature, Television | April 7th, 2021

When Peter Jack­son’s The Fel­low­ship of the Ring came out in 2001, it her­ald­ed a cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy that would, at long last, pos­sess scale, pro­duc­tion val­ue, and sheer ambi­tion enough to do jus­tice to the orig­i­nal nov­els. This set it some­what apart from the ver­sion of The Fel­low­ship of the Ring that had aired just ten years before on Leningrad Tele­vi­sion — and has­n’t been seen since, at least until its recent upload (in two parts) to Youtube. An unof­fi­cial adap­ta­tion, Khran­iteli tells a sto­ry every sin­gle Tolkien read­er around the world will rec­og­nize, even if they don’t under­stand unsub­ti­tled Russ­ian. The pro­duc­tion’s appeal lies in any case not in its dia­logue, but what we’ll call its look and feel.

“Fea­tur­ing a score by Andrei Romanov of the rock band Akvar­i­um and some incred­i­bly cheap pro­duc­tion design, no one is going to con­fuse this Lord of the Rings with Jackson’s films,” writes /Film’s Chris Evan­ge­lista. “The sets look like, well, sets, and the spe­cial effects — if you can call them that — are delight­ful­ly hokey. This appears to have had almost no bud­get, and that only lends to the charm.”

Despite its cheap­ness, Khran­iteli dis­plays exu­ber­ance on mul­ti­ple lev­els, includ­ing its often-the­atri­cal per­for­mances as well as visu­al effects, exe­cut­ed with the still-new video tech­nol­o­gy of the time, that oscil­late between the hok­i­ly tra­di­tion­al and the near­ly avant-garde. Some scenes, in fact, look not entire­ly dis­sim­i­lar to those of Pros­per­o’s Books, Peter Green­away’s high-tech vision of Shake­speare that also pre­miered in 1991.

That year was the Sovi­et Union’s last, and the pro­longed polit­i­cal shake­up that ensued could par­tial­ly explain why Khran­iteli went unseen for so long. Until now, obscu­ri­ty-hunters have had to make do with The Fairy­tale Jour­ney of Mr. Bil­bo Bag­gins, The Hob­bit (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), Leningrad Tele­vi­sion’s ear­li­er adap­ta­tion of Tolkien’s pre-Lord of the Rings chil­dren’s nov­el. It was the now long-gone Leningrad Tele­vi­sion’s suc­ces­sor enti­ty 5TV that just put the Sovi­et Fel­low­ship of the Ring online — and in seem­ing­ly pris­tine con­di­tion at that — to the delight of glob­al Tolkien enthu­si­asts who’d known only rumors of its exis­tence. And as many of them have already found, for all the short­com­ings, Khran­iteli still has Tom Bom­badil, for whose omis­sion from his sprawl­ing block­busters Jack­son will sure­ly nev­er hear the end.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 1985 Sovi­et TV Adap­ta­tion of The Hob­bit: Cheap and Yet Strange­ly Charm­ing

Illus­tra­tions of The Lord of the Rings in Russ­ian Iconog­ra­phy Style (1993)

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

The Lord of the Rings Mythol­o­gy Explained in 10 Min­utes, in Two Illus­trat­ed Videos

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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How Sounds Are Faked For Nature Documentaries: Meet the Artists Who Create the Sounds of Fish, Spiders, Orangutans, Mushrooms & More

in Film, Nature, Television | March 25th, 2021

We think of nature doc­u­men­taries as pri­mar­i­ly visu­al works. As well we prob­a­bly should, giv­en the count­less, most­ly dull and uncom­fort­able hours spent in the field they demand of their pho­tog­ra­phy crews. But what comes to mind when we imag­ine the sound of nature doc­u­men­taries — apart, of course, from the voice of David Atten­bor­ough? Lis­ten close­ly dur­ing the breaks in his nar­ra­tion of such hit nature series as Plan­et Earth or Our Plan­et, and you’ll hear all man­ner of sounds: the sound of sharks swim­ming, of orang­utans chew­ing, of spi­ders shoot­ing their webs, of mush­rooms sprout­ing. Hang on — mush­rooms sprout­ing?

Nature doc­u­men­taries, as nar­ra­tor Abby Tang says in the Insid­er video above, are full of “sounds that would either be impos­si­ble to cap­ture, or ones that are straight-up made up.” In this they dif­fer lit­tle from script­ed films, whose actu­al shoots usu­al­ly man­age to record only the actors’ dia­logue, if that.

Work­ing in the wild, far indeed from any stu­dio, nature doc­u­men­tar­i­ans “might actu­al­ly be shoot­ing a sub­ject mat­ter that’s across a val­ley, or they’ll cap­ture objects nor­mal­ly too small to have a reg­is­tered noise to it.” Hence the need for a cat­e­go­ry of pro­fes­sion­als pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture: foley artists, those inven­tive cre­ators of foot­steps, door-knocks, punch­es, sword-unsheath­ings, and all the oth­er sounds view­ers expect to hear.

Here foley artist Richard Hin­ton demon­strates his meth­ods for breath­ing son­ic life into a range of nature scenes. A shoal of mack­er­el? Old mag­net­ic audio tape sloshed around in a tub of water. The vibra­tions of a spi­der­web? A slinky, held per­ilous­ly close to the micro­phone. The north­ern lights? A pair of cym­bals and a set of wind chimes. Often, just the right sound emerges from those of two dis­tinct objects lay­ered togeth­er, a prin­ci­ple known to foley artists since the ear­ly days of radio dra­ma. In fact, though foley sounds today go through a fair bit of dig­i­tal edit­ing and pro­cess­ing to make them more con­vinc­ing, the tools and tech­niques used to pro­duce them have changed lit­tle since those days. The next time you watch a bear onscreen open its eyes after months-long hiber­na­tion, con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that you’re hear­ing an Eng­lish­man mak­ing nois­es with scraps of fur and his mouth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness & Awe

Chill Out to 70 Hours of Ocean­scape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth

Watch­ing Nature Doc­u­men­taries Can Pro­duce “Real Hap­pi­ness,” Finds a Study from the BBC and UC-Berke­ley

How the Sounds You Hear in Movies Are Real­ly Made: Dis­cov­er the Mag­ic of “Foley Artists”

How the Sound Effects on 1930s Radio Shows Were Made: An Inside Look

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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The Aesthetic of Anime: A New Video Essay Explores a Rich Tradition of Japanese Animation

in Animation, Television | March 22nd, 2021

Giant robots, super­pow­ered school­girls, berz­erk­er mar­tial artists: we all know the sort of fig­ures that rep­re­sent ani­me. Though clichéd, the wide­spread nature of these per­cep­tions actu­al­ly shows how far Japan­ese ani­ma­tion has come over the past few decades. Not so long ago, the aver­age West­ern­er did­n’t know the mean­ing of the world ani­me, let alone its ori­gin. Today, thanks not least to the films of Hayao Miyaza­ki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, the aver­age West­ern­er has like­ly already been exposed to one or two mas­ter­works of the form. This view­ing expe­ri­ence pro­vides a sense of why Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, far from sim­ply ani­ma­tion that hap­pens to be Japan­ese, mer­its a term of its own: any of us, no mat­ter how inex­pe­ri­enced, can sense “The Aes­thet­ic of Ani­me.”

Tak­ing that con­cept as the title of their lat­est video essay, Lewis and Luiza Liz Bond of The Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy show us a range of cin­e­mat­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties that ani­me has opened up since the 1980s. I recall, long ago, stay­ing up late to tune in to the Sci-Fi Chan­nel’s “Sat­ur­day Night Ani­me” block to catch such clas­sics from that decade as Venus Wars and Project A‑Ko.

While Japan­ese ani­ma­tion in all its forms has gone much more main­stream around the world since then, it has­n’t result­ed in a loss of artis­tic, nar­ra­tive, and the­mat­ic inven­tive­ness. On the con­trary, Bond argues: over the past quar­ter-cen­tu­ry, series like Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion, Ser­i­al Exper­i­ments Lain, and Death Note have not only pushed the bound­aries of ani­me, but demon­strat­ed a pow­er to “re-sig­ni­fy sto­ry­telling con­ven­tions that go beyond the ani­me form itself.”

In the effort to reveal the true nature of “the mis­un­der­stood and often dis­re­gard­ed world of ani­me,” this video essay ref­er­ences and visu­al­ly quotes dozens of dif­fer­ent shows. (It stops short of the also-vast realm of fea­ture films, such as Ghost in the Shell or the work of Satoshi Kon.) Its range includes the “exis­ten­tial med­i­ta­tion on lone­li­ness” that is Cow­boy Bebop, sub­ject of anoth­er Bond exe­ge­sis pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, and “city pop-fueled Superdi­men­sion­al Fortress Macross,” which did so much back in the 80s to define not just giant-robot ani­me but ani­me itself. Trope-heavy, over-the-top, and “unapolo­get­i­cal­ly weird” though it may seem (but usu­al­ly not, as Bond implies, with­out self-aware­ness), ani­me con­tin­ues to real­ize visions not avail­able — nor even con­ceiv­able — to any oth­er art form.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Exis­ten­tial Phi­los­o­phy of Cow­boy Bebop, the Cult Japan­ese Ani­me Series, Explored in a Thought­ful Video Essay

The Ani­ma­tions That Changed Cin­e­ma: The Ground­break­ing Lega­cies of Prince Achmed, Aki­ra, The Iron Giant & More

The Phi­los­o­phy, Sto­ry­telling & Visu­al Cre­ativ­i­ty of Ghost in the Shell, the Acclaimed Ani­me Film, Explained in Video Essays

How Mas­ter Japan­ese Ani­ma­tor Satoshi Kon Pushed the Bound­aries of Mak­ing Ani­me: A Video Essay

The Phi­los­o­phy of Hayao Miyaza­ki: A Video Essay on How the Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Reli­gion Shin­to Suf­fus­es Miyazaki’s Films

The Ori­gins of Ani­me: Watch Free Online 64 Ani­ma­tions That Launched the Japan­ese Ani­me Tra­di­tion

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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Saturday Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in October, 1975

in Comedy, Television | March 10th, 2021

How do you kick off the longest run­ning live sketch com­e­dy show in tele­vi­sion his­to­ry? If you’re in the cast and crew for the first episode of Sat­ur­day Night Live, you have no idea you’re doing any­thing of the kind. Still the pressure’s on, and the new­ly hired “Not Ready for Prime­time Play­ers” had a lot of com­pe­ti­tion on their own show that night. When Sat­ur­day Night, the orig­i­nal title for SNL, made its debut on Octo­ber 11, 1975, doing live com­e­dy on tele­vi­sion was an extreme­ly risky propo­si­tion.

So, what do you do if you’re pro­duc­ers Dick Eber­sol and Lorne Michaels? Put your riski­est foot for­ward — John Belushi, the “first rock & roll star of com­e­dy” writes Rolling Stone, and “the ‘live’ in Sat­ur­day Night Live.” The man who would be comedy’s king, for a time, before he left the stage too soon. His first sketch, and the first on-air for SNL, reveals “a ten­den­cy toward the time­less­ly pecu­liar,” Time mag­a­zine writes, that made the show an instant cult hit.

Rather than skew­er­ing top­i­cal issues or imper­son­at­ing celebri­ties, the first sketch, “The Wolver­ines” goes after the ripe tar­gets of an immi­grant (Belushi) learn­ing Eng­lish and his teacher, played by head writer Michael O’Donoghue, who insists on mak­ing Belushi repeat the tit­u­lar word in non­sen­si­cal phras­es like “I would like to feed your fin­ger­tips to the wolver­ines.”

Belushi’s accent has shades of Andy Kaufman’s “for­eign man” from Caspi­ar, and he gets a brief moment to dis­play his phys­i­cal com­e­dy skills when he keels over in imi­ta­tion of his teacher hav­ing a heart attack. “The Wolver­ines” is short, non­sen­si­cal, and weird­ly sweet. “No one would know what kind of show this was from see­ing that,” Michaels remem­bered. We can still look back at that wild­ly uneven first sea­son and won­der what kind of show SNL would be now if it had held on to the anar­chic spir­it of the ear­ly years. But that’s a lot to ask of a 45-year-old live com­e­dy show.

The night’s guest was George Car­lin, who did not appear in any sketch­es, but who did get three sep­a­rate mono­logues. The show also fea­tured two musi­cal guests, Bil­ly Pre­ston and Janis Ian. Andy Kauf­man made an appear­ance doing his famous Mighty Mouse bit, and the Mup­pets were there (not the fun Mup­pets, but a “dark and grumpy ver­sion” Jim Hen­son dis­owned after the first sea­son.)

The first episode was also the first to fea­ture the icon­ic intro, “Live from New York, it’s Sat­ur­day Night!” — deliv­ered by Chevy Chase. Though it has become a cel­e­bra­to­ry announce­ment, at the time “it’s Sat­ur­day Night!” was a dark reminder of the live com­e­dy vari­ety show, Sat­ur­day Night Live with Howard Cosell, then fail­ing through its first and only sea­son before its 18-episode run came to an end the fol­low­ing year.

See more from that weird first night above, includ­ing Carlin’s Foot­ball and Base­ball mono­logue and the for­got­ten SNL Mup­pets, just above.

via Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Cre­at­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live: Behind-the Scenes Videos Reveal How the Icon­ic Com­e­dy Show Gets Made

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

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

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Why Is the Debut Disney+ Marvel TV Show a Tribute to Classic Sitcoms? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #85 on WandaVision

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | March 10th, 2021

The newest, now con­clud­ed super­hero series fea­tures char­ac­ters no one asked to hear more about, one of whom was accord­ing to the Mar­vel fran­chise films def­i­nite­ly dead, and drops them in media res into a lov­ing styl­is­tic recre­ation of The Dick Van Dyke Show, then I Dream of Jeanie, etc. Why is this hap­pen­ing, and is it good?

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by guest Rolan­do Nieves from the Remakes, Reboots, and Revivals pod­cast try to fig­ure out what kind of sto­ry­telling this real­ly is, whether this exper­i­ment was suc­cess­ful, whether you have to be a Mar­vel die-hard (or old enough to have watched those sit-coms) to get it, and the poten­tial for future odd­ball super­hero out­ings that don’t fea­ture a big boss fight.

This episode is hot off the press­es, and more arti­cles are com­ing out about Wan­daVi­sion now, but here are a few that might help:

Fol­low Rolan­do @Rolando_Nieves.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion (with more Rolan­do!) that 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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How Looney Tunes & Other Classic Cartoons Helped Americans Become Musically Literate

in Animation, Film, Music, Television | March 9th, 2021

Dis­tance learn­ing exper­i­ments on tele­vi­sion long pre­date the medium’s use as a con­duit for adver­tis­ing and mass enter­tain­ment. “Before it became known as the ‘idiot box,’” writes Matt Novak at Smith­son­ian, “tele­vi­sion was seen as the best hope for bring­ing enlight­en­ment to the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment made way for edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming dur­ing TV’s ear­li­est years when the FCC reserved 242 non­com­mer­cial chan­nels “to encour­age edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming.”

Fund­ing did not mate­ri­al­ize, but the nation’s spir­it was will­ing, Life mag­a­zine main­tained: “the hunger of our cit­i­zen­ry for cul­ture and self-improve­ment has always been gross­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed.” Was this so? Per­haps. At the medium’s very begin­nings as stan­dard appli­ance in many Amer­i­can homes, there was Leonard Bern­stein. His Omnibus series debuted in 1952, “the first com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion out­let for exper­i­men­ta­tion in the arts,” notes Schuyler G. Chapin. Six years lat­er, he debuted his Young People’s Con­certs, spread­ing musi­cal lit­er­a­cy on TV through the for­mat for the next 14 years.

“It was to [Bernstein’s] — and our — good for­tune that he and the Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion grew to matu­ri­ty togeth­er,” wrote crit­ic Robert S. Clark in well-deserved trib­ute. Much the same could be said of some unlike­ly can­di­dates for TV musi­cal edu­ca­tors: Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and oth­er clas­sic ani­ma­tors, who did as much, and maybe more, to famil­iar­ize Amer­i­can view­ers with clas­si­cal music as per­haps all of Bernstein’s for­mi­da­ble efforts com­bined.

But Jones and his fel­low ani­ma­tors have not been giv­en their prop­er due, car­toon­ist and ani­ma­tor Vin­cent Alexan­der sug­gest­ed in a recent Twit­ter thread. Aim­ing to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion, Alexan­der post­ed a wealth of exam­ples from Bugs Bun­ny & company’s con­tri­bu­tions to Amer­i­cans’ musi­cal lit­er­a­cy. Grant­ed, many of these car­toons start­ed as short films in the­aters, but they spent many more decades on TV, enter­tain­ing mil­lions of all ages while expos­ing them to a wide vari­ety of clas­si­cal com­po­si­tions.

Alexan­der points out how car­toons like the first Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheep­dog (1953) set a prece­dent for using Mendelssohn’s “Früh­lingslied (Spring Song)” in lat­er ani­mat­ed favorites like Ren & Stimpy and Sponge­bob Squarepants. He gives oblig­a­tory nods to Dis­ney and cites sev­er­al oth­er non-Looney Tunes exam­ples like Popeye’s “Spinach Over­ture,” based on Franz von Suppé’s “The Poet and Peas­ant Over­ture.” But on the whole, the thread focus­es on Warn­er Bros. clas­sics, espe­cial­ly those in which Bugs Bun­ny demon­strates his tal­ents as a con­duc­tor, pianist, and bar­ber to the bald Elmer Fudd.

“I don’t know who can lis­ten to the famous opera The Bar­ber of Seville by Gioachi­no Rossi­ni with­out think­ing of Bugs Bun­ny,” writes Alexan­der. “The way direc­tor Chuck Jones syn­chro­nizes the slap­stick action to the sound­track is flat-out mas­ter­ful.” There are fair ques­tions to be asked here — and Bern­stein would sure­ly ask them: How many of those peo­ple can appre­ci­ate Rossi­ni with­out the slap­stick? How many have heard, and seen, a full per­for­mance of his work sans Fudd?

Who can hear Wag­n­er with­out want­i­ng to sing at the top of their lungs, “Kill da wab­bit, Kill da wab­bit, Kill da wab­bit!” Good­ness knows, I can’t. Nonethe­less, Chuck Jones’ What’s Opera, Doc? has been rec­og­nized for its major con­tri­bu­tions to “Amer­i­can enlight­en­ment” — deemed “cul­tur­al­ly, his­tor­i­cal­ly or aes­thet­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant” by the Library of Con­gress and pre­served in the Nation­al Film Reg­istry. This, Alexan­der sug­gests, is as it should be. (Just con­sid­er the opera singers Bugs inspired). We should hon­or ani­ma­tion’s major con­tri­bu­tions to our cul­ture lit­er­a­cy: a mass musi­cal edu­ca­tion by car­toon. See many more clas­sic clips in Alexander’s Twit­ter thread here.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Evo­lu­tion of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bun­ny, Daffy Duck & Oth­er Looney Tunes Leg­ends: A Video Essay

Kill the Wab­bit!: How the 1957 Bugs Bun­ny Car­toon, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Inspired Today’s Opera Singers to First Get Into Opera

Books Come to Life in Clas­sic Car­toons from 1930s and 1940s

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

 

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John Cleese’s Very Favorite Comedy Sketches

in Comedy, Television | March 9th, 2021

Asked by Time mag­a­zine to name his favorite sketch­es among all those he has writ­ten or per­formed in, John Cleese delib­er­ate­ly exclud­ed most of his Mon­ty Python work. Instead he turned deep­er into his back pages, all the way to At Last the 1948 Show, which orig­i­nal­ly aired on ITV in 1967. (Its title ref­er­enced the long delays inflict­ed by tele­vi­sion’s exec­u­tive deci­sion-mak­ing process­es.) The pro­gram was con­ceived at the behest of broad­cast­er David Frost, who’d pre­vi­ous­ly engaged Cleese and fel­low Cam­bridge Foot­lights alum­nus (and future Python) Gra­ham Chap­man to write and per­form on The Frost Report, one of the major fruits of the “satire boom” in mid-1960s Britain.

“We would come up with crazy ideas, and all the writ­ers would roar with laugh­ter at the table,” Cleese remem­bered of his Frost Report expe­ri­ence in a 2014 Q&A at the British Film Insti­tute. But how­ev­er hilar­i­ous, these ideas would inevitably be reject­ed for the rea­son that “they won’t get it in Brad­ford.”

The late-night 1948 Show let Cleese and his col­lab­o­ra­tors, includ­ing come­di­an Mar­ty Feld­man, take a few more chances: “We knew that not every­one in Brad­ford would get it, so were tak­ing a lit­tle bit of a bet that enough peo­ple would get it.” This result­ed in sketch­es like “The Book­shop,” in which Feld­man’s cus­tomer makes a series of impos­si­ble demands of Cleese’s shop­keep­er, allow­ing the lat­ter to show­case his already well-honed abil­i­ty to per­form frus­tra­tion boil­ing over into derange­ment.

Cleese, who still gets comedic mileage out of his upright “estab­lish­ment” appear­ance, seems to have spe­cial­ized in play­ing such absurd­ly bur­dened busi­ness­men. His most icon­ic role must be the clenched, boor­ish hote­lier Basil Fawl­ty, played in the post-Python series Fawl­ty Tow­ers, but he was essay­ing such fig­ures long before. Take the far­ci­cal sketch about a hard-of-hear­ing eye­wear deal­er, which lat­er evolved into a seg­ment of the Ger­man spe­cial Mon­ty Python’s Fliegen­der Zirkus from 1972. Ear­li­er that year, Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus put Cleese on the cus­tomer’s side of the counter, oppo­site Michael Pal­in’s cheese shop own­er who evi­dent­ly refus­es to stock all known vari­eties of cheese. Though it did­n’t orig­i­nate on the 1948 Show, the now-immor­tal “cheese shop sketch” was writ­ten as anoth­er Cleese-Chap­man col­lab­o­ra­tion — and one that dis­plays a firm com­mit­ment to cus­tomer ser­vice, or the lack there­of, as com­ic mate­r­i­al.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese Plays the Dev­il, Makes a Spe­cial Appeal for Hell, 1966

John Cleese’s Advice to Young Artists: “Steal Any­thing You Think Is Real­ly Good”

Mon­ty Python’s John Cleese Cre­ates Ads for the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion

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 12 Seasons of the Dick Cavett Show, 18 Seasons of Johnny Carson & Many Other Classic Shows on Shout! Factory

in Television | March 5th, 2021

Dick Cavett was some­times called the “think­ing man’s John­ny Car­son,” and he came up in a sim­i­lar fashion—a stand-up, a joke writer for hire— until he was giv­en a chance to host a late night show. But com­pare a Cavett episode to any late night host today, and it feels like a very dif­fer­ent time. Sure, stars were booked to talk about their upcom­ing movie or album or tele­vi­sion show, but Cavett was so laid back, so chat­ty and con­ver­sant, that it often felt like you were eaves­drop­ping. It’s a style you find more on pod­casts these days than television—Cavett is gen­uine­ly inquis­i­tive. He nev­er got high rat­ings because of it, but he cer­tain­ly got an impres­sive guest list.

We’ve been writ­ing about some of the clips here on Open Cul­ture, but Shout! Fac­to­ry, the DVD com­pa­ny that has piv­ot­ed to stream­ing, offers full episodes of Dick Cavett’s show to watch for free. They some­times have ads, but these days so do most YouTube chan­nels we fea­ture. (Of the episodes I let run, I didn’t real­ly see any com­mer­cials so your mileage may vary as they say).

And what a cul­tur­al trove is there on their site: a select­ed his­to­ry of Cavett’s show, arranged into themed “sea­sons” that stretch from 1969 to 1995. There’s “Rock Icons” (Sly Stone, Janis Joplin, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, George Har­ri­son, David Bowie, Frank Zap­pa, etc.),

“Hol­ly­wood Greats” (Alfred Hitch­cock, Grou­cho Marx, Bet­ty Davis, et al), authors, sports icons, politi­cians, vision­ar­ies (from Jim Hen­son to Ter­ry Gilliam), film direc­tors (includ­ing Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Jean-Luc Godard, and Ing­mar Bergman), and one called “Black His­to­ry Month” although it’s from dif­fer­ent months and dif­fer­ent years, fea­tur­ing inter­views with Shirley Chisholm, Alice Walk­er, and James Earl Jones. (Let’s also men­tion that Cavett’s inter­view with John Cas­savetes, Peter Falk, and Ben Gaz­zara is one of the most anar­chic tele­vi­sion inter­views in his­to­ry). Enter the Cavett col­lec­tion here.

Along sim­i­lar lines, Shout! Fac­to­ry fea­tures 18 themed “sea­sons” of The Tonight Show with John­ny Car­son, the man who refined the talk show tem­plate that late night has fol­lowed ever since. There’s “Ani­mal Antics” with Car­son encoun­ter­ing var­i­ous zoo ani­mals brought on by Joan Embery and Jim Fowler; a wide selec­tion of stand-up come­di­ans—The Tonight Show was con­sid­ered the big break for any come­di­an (and some­times future host); and a selec­tion of Hol­ly­wood leg­ends. (View the episodes here.)

In fact, the whole web­site is a fan­tas­tic time-suck of the first order: a huge assort­ment of Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000, episodes of Ernie Kovacs, The Pris­on­er and its pre­quel of sorts Secret Agent, and much more.

And a spe­cial men­tion to host­ing the first sea­son of Soul! the 1968–69 performance/variety hour that exclu­sive­ly focused on the African-Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence. In its hey­day, Soul! was watched by near­ly three-quar­ters of the Black pop­u­la­tion. And why not: guests includ­ed Muham­mad Ali, James Bald­win, Bill With­ers, Al Green, Gladys Knight, Har­ry Bela­fonte, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, and jazz leg­ends Lee Mor­gan, Horace Sil­ver, and Bob­bi Humphrey.

Explore the entire Shout! Fac­to­ry media col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Posts:

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Appears in a Rare Tele­vi­sion & Tells Dick Cavett about His Love of Old Tokyo & His Samu­rai Lin­eage (1981)

Sal­vador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Sur­re­al­ism, the Gold­en Ratio & More (1970)

Carl Sagan Issues a Chill­ing Warn­ing to Amer­i­ca in His Final Inter­view (1996)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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