Watch Orson Welles’ Intoxicating Wine Commercials That Became an 80s Cultural Phenomenon

in Food & Drink, Television | February 24th, 2021

“We will sell no wine before its time”: some Amer­i­cans respond to this phrase with a chuck­le of recog­ni­tion, oth­ers by ask­ing who’ll sell what wine before when. The dif­fer­ence must be gen­er­a­tional, since those alive to watch tele­vi­sion in the late 1970s and ear­ly 80s can’t have avoid­ed hear­ing those words intoned on a reg­u­lar basis — and in no less pow­er­ful a voice than Orson Welles’. Com­ing up on forty years after Cit­i­zen Kane, the for­mer boy-won­der auteur had fall­en on hard times. Strug­gling to com­plete his fea­ture The Oth­er Side of the Wind (lit­tle know­ing that Net­flix would even­tu­al­ly do it for him), he relied on act­ing work to raise pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al funds. He’d done it before, but now the pro­duc­tions offer­ing him the most lucra­tive roles hap­pened to be com­mer­cials for cheap wine.

Despite hav­ing been cast into the wilder­ness by Hol­ly­wood, if to some degree will­ing­ly, Welles still had cul­tur­al cachet — exact­ly what the high­er-ups at the mass-mar­ket Cal­i­for­nia wine pro­duc­er Paul Mas­son thought their brand need­ed. Mak­ing use of Welles’ late-peri­od pub­lic image as a Fal­staffi­an gour­mand, Paul Mas­son com­mis­sioned a series of tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials and print adver­tise­ments in which he per­son­al­ly endors­es a range of their vari­etals.

In com­par­ing Paul Mas­son’s “Emer­ald Dry” to Beethoven’s Fifth Sym­pho­ny and Gone With the Wind, two works of art known for their pro­longed ges­ta­tion peri­ods, Welles also implic­it­ly acknowl­edged his own artis­tic rep­u­ta­tion for mak­ing films of genius, if films of genius few and far between.

Though Welles balked at the effron­tery of a script com­par­ing Paul Mas­son wine to a Stradi­var­ius vio­lin, he was­n’t with­out gen­uine appre­ci­a­tion for the prod­uct. “Orson liked Paul Masson’s caber­net,” said John Annar­i­no, the adman at DDB Need­ham who han­dled the Paul Mas­son account. “He often called the ad agency and instruct­ed, ‘Send more red.’ ” He also hap­pened to be a high­ly expe­ri­enced booze sales­man: “As ear­ly as 1945 he had done a radio spot for Cres­ta Blan­ca Wines,” writes Inside Hook’s Aaron Gold­farb. “By 1972 he was doing print work with Jim Beam bour­bon. By 1975 he was hawk­ing Carls­berg Lager. That same year, he pitched Domecq Sher­ry, Sande­man port (in which he por­trayed their ‘Sande­man Don’ char­ac­ter) and Nikka Japan­ese Whiskey, which were a huge hit over­seas.”

The cam­paign got Paul Mas­son a sub­stan­tial bump in sales, but it stuck DDB Need­ham with a some­what dif­fi­cult star. This is evi­denced not just by anec­dotes from the set but sur­viv­ing footage that shows Welles, far from dis­dain­ful of the wine at hand, seem­ing­ly too sat­is­fied by it to deliv­er his lines prop­er­ly. Much like the string of increas­ing­ly bit­ter com­plaints cap­tured dur­ing the voiceover record­ing of a Find­us frozen peas com­mer­cial, Welles’ seem­ing­ly drunk­en takes for Paul Mas­son — and even the fin­ished spots — have gone viral in the inter­net age. Rack­ing up mil­lions upon mil­lions of views on Youtube, these videos have begun to bring “We will sell no wine before its time,” a catch­phrase much-ref­er­enced in the 80s, back into the zeit­geist. But then, don’t some things only improve with age?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­ma­tion of Orson Welles’ Famous Frozen Peas Rant

Orson Welles Teach­es Bac­carat, Craps, Black­jack, Roulette, and Keno at Cae­sars Palace (1978)

The Improb­a­ble Time When Orson Welles Inter­viewed Andy Kauf­man (1982)

Sal­vador Dali’s 1978 Wine Guide, The Wines of Gala, Gets Reis­sued: Sen­su­al Viti­cul­ture Meets Sur­re­al Art

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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Increasing Disabled/Other-Abled Representation in Media — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #83

in Podcasts, Politics, Pretty Much Pop, Television | February 24th, 2021

At least 20% of us have some sort of dis­abil­i­ty, yet such con­di­tions are reflect­ed by only tiny por­tion of TV and film char­ac­ter­i­za­tions, and what char­ac­ters are por­trayed typ­i­cal­ly get played by non-dis­abled actors. Depic­tions often focus on what it’s like to live with the con­di­tion. This can of course be social­ly ben­e­fi­cial, but we don’t want to essen­tial­ize peo­ple as their con­di­tions, so it’s even more use­ful to fea­ture dis­abled actors and char­ac­ters when the plot is not about their dis­abil­i­ty.

Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by play­wright Kay­la Dryesse to talk about hur­dles to rep­re­sen­ta­tion, dis­abil­i­ty cul­ture, whether “dis­abil­i­ty” is even the right word, neg­a­tive stereo­types (no less than five James Bond vil­lains are in wheel­chairs!), and issues in por­tray­ing dis­abil­i­ty relat­ed to the­ater, com­e­dy, hor­ror, and super­heroes. Some shows men­tioned include Speech­less, Atyp­i­cal, Every­thing’s Gonna Be Okay, Break­ing Bad, Glee, The Stand, The Witch­es, and The Great British Bake-Off.

Learn more from these arti­cles:

Also, watch Stel­la Young’s TED talk, called “I’m Not Your Inspi­ra­tion, Thank You Very Much;” the episode of Drunk His­to­ry about 504 acces­si­bil­i­ty; and Ste­vie Won­der’s SNL par­o­dy of a cam­era com­mer­cial.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion 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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Anthony Bourdain Talks About the Big Break That Changed His Life–at Age 44

in Books, Food & Drink, Television | February 23rd, 2021

In 1999, Antho­ny Bourdain’s career seemed to have stalled. While his “prin­ci­pal voca­tion remained his posi­tion as exec­u­tive chef” at New York’s Les Halles, rest­less intel­li­gence and wan­der­lust kept him look­ing for oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties. “He was 43 years old, rode hard and put up wet,” writes Eliz­a­beth Nel­son at The Ringer, “a recov­er­ing addict with a num­ber of debts and a pen­chant for find­ing trou­ble in fail­ing restau­rants across the city.” He had fought for and won an unde­ni­able mea­sure of suc­cess, but he hard­ly seemed on the thresh­old of the major celebri­ty chef­dom he would main­tain until his death twen­ty years lat­er in 2018.

Then, “in the spring of 2000, his sub­li­mat­ed lit­er­ary ambi­tions sud­den­ly caught up with and then quick­ly sur­passed his cook­ing.” Bourdain’s mem­oir Kitchen Con­fi­den­tial “became an imme­di­ate sen­sa­tion,” intro­duc­ing his icon­o­clasm, acer­bic wit, and out­ra­geous con­fes­sion­al style to mil­lions of read­ers, who would soon become view­ers of his try-any­thing trav­el­ogue series, A Cook’s Tour, No Reser­va­tions, The Lay­over, and Parts Unknown, as well as loy­al read­ers of his sub­se­quent books, and even fic­tion like as Gone Bam­boo, a crime nov­el soon to become a TV series.

How did Bour­dain first get his win­ning per­son­al­i­ty before the mass­es? It all start­ed with a 1999 New York­er arti­cle called “Don’t Eat Before Read­ing This,” the pre­de­ces­sor to Kitchen Con­fi­den­tial and an essay that begins with what we might now rec­og­nize as a pro­to­typ­i­cal­ly Bour­dain­ian sen­tence: “Good food, good eat­ing, is all about blood and organs, cru­el­ty and decay.” In the inter­view clip above, from Bourdain’s final, 2017 inter­view with Fast Com­pa­ny, he talks about how the sto­ry led to his “huge break” just a cou­ple days after it ran, when a Blooms­bury edi­tor called with an offer of “the stag­ger­ing­ly high price of fifty thou­sand dol­lars to write a book.”

Every­one who loves Bourdain’s writing—and who loved his gen­er­ous, ecu­meni­cal culi­nary spirit—knows why Kitchen Con­fi­den­tial changed his life overnight, as he says. Yes, “food is pain,” as he writes in the book’s “First Course,” but also, “food is sex”—”the delights of Por­tuguese squid stew, of Well­fleet oys­ters on the half­shell, New Eng­land clam chow­der, of greasy, won­der­ful, fire-red chori­zo sausages, kale soup, and a night when the striped bass jumped right out of the water and onto Cape Cod’s din­ner tables.” Bourdain’s prose lingers over every delight, prepar­ing us for the escapades to come.

In Kitchen Con­fi­den­tial, the exhaus­tion, “sheer weird­ness,” and con­stant “threat of dis­as­ter,” that attend New York kitchen life (and life “inside the CIA”—the Culi­nary Insti­tute of Amer­i­ca, that is), becomes fleshed out with scenes of culi­nary deca­dence the likes of which most read­ers had nev­er seen, smelled, or tast­ed. Fans craved more and more from the chef who wrote, in 1999, just before he would become a best­selling house­hold name, “my career has tak­en an eeri­ly appro­pri­ate turn: these days, I’m the chef de cui­sine of a much loved, old-school French brasserie/bistro where… every part of the animal—hooves, snout, cheeks, skin, and organs—is avid­ly and appre­cia­tive­ly pre­pared and con­sumed.”

Read Bourdain’s New York­er essay here and see his full 2017 inter­view with Fast Com­pa­ny just above.

via @Yoh31

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Life Lessons from Antho­ny Bour­dain: How He Devel­oped His Iron Pro­fes­sion­al­ism, Achieved Cre­ative Free­dom & Learned from Fail­ure

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s Free Show, Raw Craft Where He Vis­its Crafts­men Mak­ing Gui­tars, Tat­toos, Motor­cy­cles & More (RIP)

Michael Pol­lan Explains How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life; Rec­om­mends Cook­ing Books, Videos & Recipes

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

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Witness the Birth of Kermit the Frog in Jim Henson’s Live TV Show, Sam and Friends (1955)

in Comedy, Creativity, Television | February 19th, 2021

Long before “green” became syn­ony­mous with eco-friend­ly prod­ucts and pro­duc­tion, an 18-year-old Jim Hen­son cre­at­ed a pup­pet who would go on to become the color’s most cel­e­brat­ed face from his mother’s cast-off green felt coat and a sin­gle ping pong ball.

Ker­mit debuted in black and white in the spring of 1955 as an ensem­ble mem­ber of Sam and Friends, a live tele­vi­sion show com­prised of five-minute episodes that the tal­ent­ed Hen­son had been tapped to write and per­form, fol­low­ing some ear­li­er suc­cess as a teen pup­peteer.

Air­ing on the Wash­ing­ton DC-area NBC affil­i­ate between the evening news and The Tonight Show, Sam and Friends was an imme­di­ate hit with view­ers, even if they ranked Ker­mit, orig­i­nal­ly more lizard than frog, fourth in terms of pop­u­lar­i­ty. (Top spot went to a skull pup­pet named Yorick.)

Watch­ing the sur­viv­ing clips of Sam and Friends, it’s easy to catch glimpses of where both Ker­mit and Hen­son were head­ed.

While Hen­son voiced Sam and all of his pup­pet friends, Ker­mit wound up sound­ing the clos­est to Hen­son him­self.

Kermit’s sig­na­ture face-crum­pling reac­tions were by design. Where­as oth­er pup­pets of the peri­od, like the tit­u­lar Sam, had stiff heads with the occa­sion­al mov­ing jaw, Kermit’s was as soft as a foot­less sock, allow­ing for far greater expres­sive­ness.

Hen­son honed Kermit’s expres­sions by plac­ing live feed mon­i­tors on the floor so he and his pup­peteer bride-to-be Jane, could see the pup­pets from the audi­ence per­spec­tive.

Unlike pre­vi­ous­ly tele­vised pup­pet per­for­mances, which pre­served the exist­ing prosce­ni­ums of the the­aters to which the play­ers had always been con­fined, Hen­son con­sid­ered the TV set frame enough. Lib­er­at­ing the pup­pets thus­ly gave more of a sketch com­e­dy feel to the pro­ceed­ings, some­thing that would car­ry over to Sesame Street and lat­er, The Mup­pet Show.

By the 12th episode, Ker­mit has found a niche as wry straight man for wack­i­er char­ac­ters like jazz afi­ciona­do Har­ry the Hip­ster who intro­duced an ele­ment of musi­cal nota­tion to the ani­mat­ed let­ters and num­bers that would become a Sesame Street sta­ple.

And sure­ly we’re not the only ones who think the Mup­pets’ recent appear­ance in a Super Bowl ad pales in com­par­i­son to Ker­mit and Harry’s live com­mer­cial for Sam and Friends’ spon­sor, a region­al brand of bacon and lunch meat.

Sam and Friends ran from 1955 to 1961, but Kermit’s first per­for­mance on The Tonight Show in 1956, lip sync­ing to Rose­mary Clooney’s record­ing of “I’ve Grown Accus­tomed to Your Face” and mug­ging in a blonde braid­ed wig, hint­ed that he and Hen­son would soon out­grow the local tele­vi­sion pond.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

The Cre­ative Life of Jim Hen­son Explored in a Six-Part Doc­u­men­tary Series

Watch The Sur­re­al 1960s Films and Com­mer­cials of Jim Hen­son

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, cur­rent issue #63. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why Does The Karate Kid Persist as the New Cobra Kai? A Critical Consideration by Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast (#82)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | February 18th, 2021

Did any­one sus­pect that the beloved 1984 film The Karate Kid (and its decreas­ing­ly beloved sequels) would now be not just remade but revived as the YouTube-Red-turned-Net­flix hit Cobra Kai? Is this new show actu­al­ly good, or just liv­ing unhealth­ily on nos­tal­gia and the fas­ci­na­tion of watch­ing teens and mid­dle aged peo­ple fist­fight and fall in love.

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark-san, Eri­ca-san, and Bri­an-san sur­vey the show and all the films for non­sen­si­cal plot­ting, vil­lain moti­va­tion, ques­tion­able act­ing, and more. It’s almost as if PMP is the best… around… and noth­ing’s ever gonna keep it down.

Care for some arti­cles with more info about these shows?

If you haven’t seen the noto­ri­ous Karate Kid III, watch this.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion 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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Akira Kurosawa Appears in a Rare Television & Tells Dick Cavett about His Love of Old Tokyo & His Samurai Lineage (1981)

in Film, Television | February 15th, 2021

There was a time in Amer­i­ca when you could sit down in the evening, turn on a tele­vi­sion talk show, and hear a con­ver­sa­tion with Aki­ra Kuro­sawa. That time was the ear­ly 1980s, and that talk show came host­ed, of course, by Dick Cavett, to whom no cul­tur­al cur­rent — and indeed no cul­ture — was too for­eign for broad­cast. With pic­tures like Rashomon, Ikiru, Sev­en Samu­rai, and Throne of Blood, Kuro­sawa estab­lished him­self in the 1950s as the most acclaimed Japan­ese auteur alive, with promi­nent admir­ers all over the world, Cavett includ­ed. “Kuro­sawa no dai-fan desu,” he says in the film­mak­er’s native lan­guage before liv­ing the Kuro­sawa dai-fan’s dream of hav­ing a chat with the mas­ter him­self.

Kuro­sawa, Cavett also notes, had nev­er been inter­viewed on tele­vi­sion in Japan, a fact that might have struck a West­ern cinephile as indica­tive of the bewil­der­ing lack of sup­port he suf­fered in his home coun­try. “Why does he think he is so revered in the West as a film­mak­er,” Cavett asks his inter­preter (Japan­ese Film Direc­tors author Audie Bock), yet “has trou­ble get­ting mon­ey up in Japan to make a film?”

To this inquiry, which must have struck him as unusu­al­ly or even refresh­ing­ly direct, Kuro­sawa first replies thus: “I cer­tain­ly can’t explain that either.” In fact his then-most recent film Kage­musha had tak­en years to reach pro­duc­tion; while unable to shoot, a despair­ing but unde­terred Kuro­sawa hand-paint­ed its every scene.

Only with the sup­port of George Lucas and Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (who went on to co-star with Kuro­sawa in a Sun­to­ry whiskey com­mer­cial) could Kage­musha even­tu­al­ly be real­ized. The pic­ture thus escaped the realm of such unmade Kuro­sawa as an adap­ta­tion of Masu­ji Ibuse’s nov­el Black Rain, which would at the end of the 1980s pass into the hands of his more eccen­tric but also-acclaimed con­tem­po­rary Shohei Ima­mu­ra. Kuro­sawa tells the sto­ry when asked if he’d ever con­sid­ered mak­ing a film about Hiroshi­ma, just one aspect of the direc­tor’s mind and expe­ri­ences about which Cavett express­es curios­i­ty. Oth­ers include the pre­war Tokyo in which he grew up, his fam­i­ly’s samu­rai lin­eage, his paci­fist detes­ta­tion of vio­lence (per­haps the source of his own films’ vio­lent pow­er), and his West­ern influ­ences. “Would he like to have made a film with John Wayne and Toshi­ro Mifu­ne?” Cavett asks.  Though the notion strikes Kuro­sawa as “very dif­fi­cult,” it’s sure­ly the stuff of a dai-fan’s dreams.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Talk About Film­mak­ing (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Inter­view

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers: Write, Write, Write and Read

Hayao Miyaza­ki Meets Aki­ra Kuro­sawa: Watch the Titans of Japan­ese Film in Con­ver­sa­tion (1993)

How Did Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Make Such Pow­er­ful & Endur­ing Films? A Wealth of Video Essays Break Down His Cin­e­mat­ic Genius

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

How Dick Cavett Brought Sophis­ti­ca­tion to Late Night Talk Shows: Watch 270 Clas­sic Inter­views Online

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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Take a Road Trip Across America with Cartoonist Lynda Barry in the 90s Documentary, Grandma’s Way Out Party

in Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, Television, Travel | February 12th, 2021

Who wouldn’t love to take a road trip with beloved car­toon­ist and edu­ca­tor Lyn­da Bar­ry? As evi­denced by Grandma’s Way Out Par­ty, above, an ear­ly-90s doc­u­men­tary made for Twin Cities Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion, Bar­ry not only finds the humor in every sit­u­a­tion, she’s always up for a detour, whether to a time hon­ored des­ti­na­tion like Mount Rush­more or Old Faith­ful, or a more impul­sive pit­stop, like a Wash­ing­ton state car repair shop dec­o­rat­ed with sculp­tures made from cast off muf­flers or the Mon­tana State Prison Hob­by Store.

Alter­nat­ing in the driver’s seat with then-boyfriend, sto­ry­teller Kevin Kling, she makes up songs on her accor­dion, clowns around in a cheap cow­girl hat, sam­ples an over­sized gas sta­tion donut, and chats up every­one she encoun­ters.

At the World’s Only Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dako­ta, she breaks the ice by ask­ing a beard­ed local guy in offi­cial Corn Palace cap and t‑shirt if his job is the ful­fill­ment of a long held dream.

“Nah,” he says. “I thought it was a joke … in Far­go, they call it the world’s biggest bird feed­er. We do have the biggest birds in South Dako­ta. They get fed good.”

He leads them to Cal Schultz, the art teacher who designed over 25 years worth of murals fes­toon­ing the exte­ri­or walls. Nudged by Bar­ry to pick a favorite, Schultz choos­es one that his 9th grade stu­dents worked on.

“I would have loved to have been in his class,” Bar­ry, a teacher now her­self, says emphat­i­cal­ly. “I would have giv­en any­thing to have worked on a Corn Palace when I was 14-years-old.”

This point is dri­ven home with a quick view of her best known cre­ation, the pig­tailed, bespec­ta­cled Marlys, osten­si­bly ren­dered in corn—an hon­or Marlys would no doubt appre­ci­ate.

Bar­ry has long been laud­ed for her under­stand­ing of and respect for children’s inner lives, and we see this nat­ur­al affin­i­ty in action when she befriends Desmond and Jake, two young par­tic­i­pants in the Crow Fair Pow Wow, just south of Billings, Mon­tana.

Frus­trat­ed by her inabil­i­ty to get a han­dle on the pro­ceed­ings (“Why didn’t I learn it in school!? Why wasn’t it part of our cur­ricu­lum?”), Bar­ry retreats to the com­fort of her sketch­book, which attracts the curi­ous boys. Even­tu­al­ly, she draws their por­traits to give them as keep­sakes, get­ting to know them bet­ter in the process.

The draw­ings they make in return are trea­sured by the recip­i­ent, not least for the win­dow they pro­vide on the cul­ture with which they are so casu­al­ly famil­iar.

Bar­ry and Kling also chance upon the Stur­gis Motor­cy­cle Ral­ly, and after a bite at the Road Kill Cafe (“from your grill to ours”), Bar­ry wax­es philo­soph­i­cal about the then-unusu­al sight of so much tat­tooed flesh:

There’s some­thing about the fact that they want some­thing on them that they can’t wash off, that even on days when they don’t want peo­ple to know they’re a bik­er, it’s still there. And I have always loved that about peo­ple, like …drag queens who will shave off their eye­brows so they can draw per­fect eye­brows on, or any­body who knows they’re dif­fer­ent and does some­thing to them­selves phys­i­cal­ly so that even on their bad days, they can’t deny it. Because I think that in the end, that’s sort of what saves your life, that you wear your col­ors. You can’t help it.

The afore­men­tioned muf­fler store prompts some mus­ings that will be very famil­iar to any­one who has immersed them­selves in Mak­ing Comics, Pic­ture This, or any oth­er of Barry’s instruc­tion­al books con­tain­ing her won­der­ful­ly loopy, intu­itive cre­ative exer­cis­es:

I think this urge to cre­ate is actu­al­ly our ani­mal instinct. And what’s sad is if we don’t let that come through us, I don’t think we have a full life on this earth. And I think we get sick because of it. I mean, it’s weird that it’s an instinct, but it’s an option, just like you can take a wild ani­mal, a beau­ti­ful, wild ani­mal and put him in a zoo. They live, they’re fine in their cage, but you don’t get to see them do the thing that a chee­tah does best, which is, you know, just run like the wind and be able to jump and do the things… I mean, it’s our instinct, it’s instinc­tu­al, it’s our beau­ti­ful, beau­ti­ful, mag­i­cal, poet­ic, mys­te­ri­ous instinct. And every once in a while, you see the flower of it come right up out of a gas sta­tion. 

After 1653 miles and one squab­ble after over­shoot­ing a sched­uled stop (“You don’t want me to go to Butte!”), the two arrive at their final des­ti­na­tion, Barry’s child­hood home in Seat­tle. The occa­sion? Barry’s Fil­ipino grandmother’s 83rd birth­day, and plans are afoot for a potluck bash at the local VFW hall. Fans will swoon to meet this ven­er­at­ed lady and the rest of Barry’s extend­ed clan, and hear Barry’s reflec­tions on what it was like to grow up in a work­ing class neigh­bor­hood where most of the fam­i­lies were mul­ti-racial.

“I walked in and it was every­thing Lyn­da said,” Kling mar­vels.

Indeed.

The jour­ney is every­thing we could have hoped for, too.

Lis­ten to a post-trip inter­view with Kling on Min­neso­ta Pub­lic Radio.

H/t to read­er Char­lotte Book­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Shows You How to Draw Bat­man in Her UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

Lyn­da Barry’s New Book Offers a Mas­ter Class in Mak­ing Comics

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine — cur­rent issue: #63 Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Do We Need Yet More Films About Time Loops? A Pretty Much Pop Discussion (#80) of Groundhog Day and its Descendents

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | February 2nd, 2021

Tine loop­ing, where a char­ac­ter is doomed to repeat the same day (or hour, or longer peri­od) is a sci-fi trope dat­ing back more than a cen­tu­ry, but real­ly entered Amer­i­can con­scious­ness with the 1993 Bill Mur­ray film Ground­hog Day. Since then, and espe­cial­ly in the last five years, there have been numer­ous iter­a­tions of this idea in var­i­ous gen­res from racial police-shoot­ing dra­ma to teen sex com­e­dy. But do we need more of this? What are the philo­soph­i­cal ideas involved, and how do these change with tweaks to the sce­nario?

Mark, Eri­ca, Bri­an, and return­ing guest Ken Ger­ber dis­cuss not only the very recent and pop­u­lar for­ays into this genre with Hulu’s Palm Springs and Net­flix’s Russ­ian Doll, but also touch on Edge of Tomor­row, Repeaters, 12:01 PM, Before I Fall, The Fare, and episodes of The Twi­light Zone, Star Trek: Dis­cov­ery, The X‑Files, and Rick & Morty.

There are of course oth­er film and TV uses of this trope. For a rel­a­tive­ly full list, you can see this wiki page list­ing time loop films and this oth­er wiki page dis­cussing lit­er­ary antecedents. Also see the “Ground­hog Day” Loop page on tvtropes.org, and here’s a rel­e­vant red­dit thread.

Here are more arti­cles:

Watch the 12:01 PM 1990 short film. This bonus episode of the 11.22.63 pod­cast had a great dis­cus­sion of time loop media includ­ing the Ken Grim­wood nov­el Replay and the short sto­ry “12:01 P.M.” and its sequels. You can read the 1941 Mal­colm Jame­son sto­ry “Dou­bled and Redou­bled” online. As a fore­run­ner to the time loop idea, check out the very short 1892 chil­dren’s sto­ry “Christ­mas Every Day” by William Dean How­ells, where time does move for­ward with its con­se­quences, but it’s always Christ­mas!

We talked a lit­tle about Hap­py Death Day with its cos­tume design­er in our ep. 38 and got into time trav­el more gen­er­al­ly with Ken in ep. 22 and into “weird sit­u­a­tions” in our Twi­light Zone ep. 52. You may also enjoy Wes Alwan’s (sub)Text pod­cast dis­cussing the psy­cho­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of Ground­hog Day.

Check out the time loop movie bin­go card that Bri­an put togeth­er (with ground­hog pic­ture by Ken):

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion 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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