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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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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