Experience the Bob Ross Experience: A New Museum Open in the TV Painter’s Former Studio Home

in Art, Museums, Television | November 11th, 2020

Bob Ross is as renowned for the gen­tle encour­age­ment of his voice as for his speedy tech­nique: indeed, these very qual­i­ties are syn­ony­mous with the name “Bob Ross.” His revival in recent years has as much to do with the de-stress­ing effects of his permed onscreen per­sona as with our awe, iron­ic or oth­er­wise, at his kitschy pic­ture-per­fect land­scapes in under an hour. He’s become as much a saint of pub­lic tele­vi­sion as Mr. Rogers and even more of an inter­net icon.

But unlike most oth­er fan­doms, the devot­ed lovers of Bob Ross have had no place to call their own. They might show up in Bob Ross cos­play at com­ic con. Yet no Bob Ross Con has made the scene. Leave it to Ross’s orig­i­nal Joy of Paint­ing stu­dio to fill the gap with a muse­um ded­i­cat­ed to the paint­ing instruc­tor. The Bob Ross Expe­ri­ence is part of a larg­er cam­pus of build­ings called Min­netrista in Muncie, Indi­ana, found­ed by the Ball fam­i­ly of Ball mason jars. It’s an “immer­sive exhib­it,” fea­tur­ing “orig­i­nal paint­ings and arti­facts” and “inspir­ing vis­i­tors with Bob’s mes­sage of fear­less cre­ativ­i­ty.”

What more could you want from a Bob Ross muse­um? Well, maybe a ful­ly-online expe­ri­ence these days. For now, you’ll have to make the trip to Muncie, where locals pay $8 a tick­et (kids $6, 3 & under are free) and non-res­i­dents shell out $15 ($12 per kid, etc). There may be nowhere else you can see Ross’s hap­py lit­tle trees in per­son. As Ayun Hal­l­i­day wrote here recent­ly, “sales of his work hov­er around zero.” Almost all of his paint­ings, save a few owned by the Smith­son­ian and a few pri­vate indi­vid­u­als, reside in stor­age in North­ern Vir­ginia, where an exhib­it came and went last year.

Ross him­self, who honed his method dur­ing short breaks in the Air Force, hard­ly ever exhib­it­ed in his life­time; he was a made-for-TV painter with a small mer­chan­dis­ing empire to match. Now, fans can make the pil­grim­age to his cre­ative TV home at the Lucius L. Ball house. Swoon over per­son­al relics like his keys and hair pick and, of course, “the artist’s palette knife, easel, and brush­es,” writes Colos­sal. “Many of the arti­facts are free to touch.” A cur­rent exhi­bi­tion at the Expe­ri­ence, “Bob Ross at Home” through August 15, 2021, show­cas­es “a few dozen of the artist’s can­vas­es, many on loan from Muncieans who got the works direct­ly from Ross.”

Not only can you hang out on set and view Ross’s paint­ings and per­son­al effects, but you can also, Art­net reports, “sign up for $70 mas­ter class­es with cer­ti­fied Bob Ross instruc­tors.” That’s $70 more than it costs to watch the mas­ter him­self on YouTube, but if you’ve already made the trip…. One only hopes the instruc­tors can chan­nel what George Buss, vice pres­i­dent of the Expe­ri­ence, calls Ross’s best qual­i­ty, his gen­tle fear­less­ness: “He takes what looks like a mis­take and turns it into some­thing beau­ti­ful.” And that, friends, is the true joy of the Bob Ross expe­ri­ence.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

What Hap­pened to the 1200 Paint­ings Paint­ed by Bob Ross? The Mys­tery Has Final­ly Been Solved

Watch 13 Come­di­ans Take “The Bob Ross Chal­lenge” & Help Raise Mon­ey for The Leukemia & Lym­phoma Soci­ety

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

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Three Days in Twin Peaks: An In-Depth Journey Through the Evocative Locations of David Lynch’s TV Series

in Film, Television, Travel | November 3rd, 2020

After a time of great per­son­al loss, a friend of mine set off on a road trip around the Unit­ed States. When I lat­er asked what part of the coun­try had made the deep­est impres­sion on him, he named a few towns about thir­ty miles east of Seat­tle: the shoot­ing loca­tions, he hard­ly need­ed tell a fel­low David Lynch fan, of Twin Peaks. Raised in Spokane, Wash­ing­ton, among a vari­ety of oth­er mod­est Amer­i­can cities, Lynch saw clear­ly the look and feel of the tit­u­lar set­ting by the time he co-cre­at­ed the show with writer Mark Frost. He even­tu­al­ly found it in the Wash­ing­ton­ian towns of Sno­qualmie, North Bend and Fall City, which even today offer a friend­ly recep­tion to the occa­sion­al Twin Peaks pil­grim — at least accord­ing to my friend.

This was more recent­ly cor­rob­o­rat­ed by Jere­mi­ah Beaver, cre­ator of Youtube “Twin Peaks the­o­ry and analy­sis show” Take the Ring. Thir­ty years after the pre­miere of the famous­ly cryp­tic yet trans­fix­ing orig­i­nal series, the Indi­anapo­lis-based Beaver made the trip to Wash­ing­ton to vis­it its every remain­ing loca­tion — as well as those used in the 1992 pre­quel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return, and even these pro­duc­tions’ delet­ed scenes.

Into the half-hour-long “Three Days in Twin Peaks” Beaver fits a great deal of infor­ma­tion relat­ed to Twin Peaks’ pro­duc­tion and mythos as well as the real-life his­to­ry of the rel­e­vant places. “It was at times hard to dis­tin­guish the Twin Peaks that lived in my imag­i­na­tion ver­sus the ground beneath my feet,” he admits.

Beaver makes his way to loca­tions both major and minor, from the Twin Peaks Sher­if­f’s Depart­ment (now the Dirt­Fish Ral­ly Rac­ing School) and the Dou­ble R din­er (Twede’s Cafe, “one of the few spots in Wash­ing­ton state that real­ly owns its Peakness”) to the shack of the Book House bik­er club and the bench in E.J. Roberts Park once sat upon by the late Har­ry Dean Stan­ton’s Carl Robb. Some real build­ings played dual roles: both Twin Peaks’ Blue Pine Lodge and Great North­ern Hotel are in real­i­ty dif­fer­ent parts of Pouls­bo’s Kiana Lodge, and the Mt. Si Motel appears as “two dif­fer­ent motels with ele­ments of the super­nat­ur­al,” first in Fire Walk with Me, then even more seed­i­ly in The Return. “That fresh moun­tain air and smell of trees is no joke,” says Beaver, words to heed if you plan on mak­ing your own Twin Peaks pil­grim­age — and if you do, you can sure­ly guess how he describes the cof­fee and cher­ry pie at Twede’s.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Twin Peaks Visu­al Sound­track Released Only in Japan: A New Way to Expe­ri­ence David Lynch’s Clas­sic Show

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks Actu­al­ly Explained: A Four-Hour Video Essay Demys­ti­fies It All

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlikely Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

in Music, Television | October 27th, 2020

If you’re a fan of Tom Jones and you don’t care who knows it, then no one needs to jus­ti­fy the jovial Welsh superstar’s lounge-soul cov­ers of pop, R&B, and rock songs to you. Cer­tain purists have been a tougher sell on Jones’ act, includ­ing, in 1969, Neil Young, who joined Jones onstage once, and only once, on the This is Tom Jones show and imme­di­ate­ly regret­ted it. But who cares about Neil Young’s cranky dis­like of com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion? Who is Neil Young to say we can’t enjoy Jones’ brava­do vocals on Cros­by, Stills, Nash & some­times Young’s “Long Time Gone”? The audi­ence sure got a kick out of it, as appar­ent­ly did the rest of the band.

Janis Joplin didn’t have any such hangups when she went on Jones’ show that same year. Well, she had a hangup, but it wasn’t Jones. “God bless her,” Jones remem­bered, “she said to me when she came on, ‘Look, I don’t do vari­ety shows; I’m only doing it because it’s you.’ So she saw through it. Then when Janis and I did the rehearsal for Raise Your Hand she looked at me and said, ‘Jesus, you can real­ly sing! (laughs) I thought, thank God peo­ple like Janis Joplin had tak­en note.” If she out­shines Jones in the tele­vised per­for­mance of the song, above, and I think we can agree she does, he doesn’t seem to mind it much.

Jones may not have had much rock cred; he would nev­er have been invit­ed to share the Wood­stock stage with CSNY and Joplin, but as a singer, he’s always earned tremen­dous respect from every­one, and right­ly so.

“Tom held his own,” writes Soci­ety of Rock, “and kept up beau­ti­ful­ly as he was swept up in the storm that was Janis Joplin’s stage pres­ence, trad­ing ver­bal licks and send­ing her into fits of joy when he let go and sur­ren­dered to her over­whelm­ing ener­gy. This wasn’t just your reg­u­lar, run of the mill vari­ety show but then again, noth­ing was ordi­nary after Janis was through with it.”

This includes any stage that had her on it, which she imme­di­ate­ly dom­i­nat­ed as soon as she opened her mouth. Hear her live ver­sion of “Raise Your Hand” at Wood­stock from ear­li­er that year, fur­ther up, and see her tear it up in Frank­furt on her Euro­pean tour with the Kozmic Blues Band. “I make it a pol­i­cy not to tell any­one to sit down,” she says by way of intro­duc­tion. “That’s to encour­age every­body to stand up.” Joplin’s death the fol­low­ing year deprived the world of one of its all-time great­est blues singers, but thanks to the inter­net, and Tom Jones, we’ll always have per­for­mances like these to remem­ber her by.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Jones Per­forms “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young–and Blows the Band & Audi­ence Away (1969)

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Get Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

Janis Joplin’s Last TV Per­for­mance & Inter­view: The Dick Cavett Show (1970)

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

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When Andy Warhol & Edie Sedgwick, the First Couple of Pop Art, Made an Odd Appearance on the Merv Griffin Show (1965)

in Art, Television | October 26th, 2020

Andy Warhol adored tele­vi­sion and, in a way, con­sid­ered it his most for­ma­tive influ­ence. While his paint­ings, silkscreens, and films, and the Vel­vet Under­ground, might be all the lega­cy he might need, Warhol, more than any­thing, longed to be a TV per­son­al­i­ty. He made his first con­cert­ed effort in 1979, launch­ing a New York pub­lic access inter­view show. In one of the show’s 42 episodes, Warhol sits in almost total silence while his friend Richard Berlin inter­views Frank Zap­pa.

But Warhol hat­ed Zap­pa, and hat­ed him even more after the inter­view. When he talked to and about sub­jects he liked, he could be par­tic­u­lar­ly chat­ty, in his dead­pan way: see, for exam­ple, his inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock, whom he great­ly admired, or ear­ly eight­ies Sat­ur­day Night Live spots for NBC and lat­er eight­ies MTV vari­ety show. In Warhol’s much ear­li­er 1965 appear­ance on the Merv Grif­fin show, above, long before he made TV pre­sen­ter a pro­fes­sion, he appears with the stun­ning­ly charis­mat­ic Edie Sedg­wick, his beloved muse and orig­i­nal super­star, and he choos­es to say almost noth­ing at all.

Sedg­wick does the talk­ing, inform­ing the host that Andy, unused to mak­ing “real­ly pub­lic appear­ances,” would only whis­per his answers in her ear, and she would whis­per them to Grif­fin. It’s an act, of course, but the per­for­mance of a per­sona that hid an even more shy, retir­ing char­ac­ter. In a text­book irony, the artist who ush­ered in the age of self-pro­mot­ing influ­encers and invent­ed the super­star could be about as engag­ing as a house­plant. Sedg­wick, on the con­trary, is char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly enthralling.

Known as “girl of the year” in 1965, the Cal­i­for­nia socialite had defect­ed from her priv­i­leged sur­round­ings to live in Warhol’s world. The two “fell in love pla­ton­i­cal­ly but intense­ly,” Karen Lynch writes at Blast mag­a­zine, “and their mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial rela­tion­ship became the talk of the town.” Grif­fin intro­duces them as “the two lead­ing expo­nents of the new scene. No par­ty in New York is con­sid­ered a suc­cess unless they are there.” This was no hyper­bole, though the audi­ence doesn’t know who they are… yet.

Sedg­wick explains how they met at the Fac­to­ry, where she arrived the pre­vi­ous year with her trust fund to intro­duce her­self and join the scene. She more or less takes over the inter­view, sell­ing Warhol’s super­star myth with elo­quence and wit, and she seems so much more like today’s art stars than Warhol (who even­tu­al­ly gives a few one-word answers), and has arguably had as much or more influ­ence on Gen Y and Z cre­ators. Sedg­wick was “more than aspi­ra­tional stereo­types allow,” writes Lynch, and more than the fact of her untime­ly death at 28.

One online artis­tic state­ment of this fact, Edie’s Farm, a site for “coun­ter­fac­tu­al cur­rent events,” sup­pos­es that Sedg­wick had sur­vived her drug addic­tion and anorex­ia and con­tin­ued mak­ing art (and giv­ing make­up tuto­ri­als) into the 21st cen­tu­ry, imag­in­ing her as her young self, not the woman in her 70s she would be. “Maybe no one’s ever had a year quite as amaz­ing as my 1965,” the fic­tion­al Sedg­wick says. “I loved Andy and his Fac­to­ry. But it was­n’t a sus­tain­able life for me”—a trag­ic irony impos­si­ble to ignore in watch­ing her oth­er­wise impos­si­bly charm­ing per­for­mance above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

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

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Watch Ridley Scott’s Controversial Nissan Sports Car Ad That Aired Only Once, During the Super Bowl (1990)

in Film, Television | October 19th, 2020

Every com­mer­cial is a fan­ta­sy, but car com­mer­cials are more fan­tas­ti­cal than most. Just look at the set­tings, with their roads, whether remote or urban, com­plete­ly emp­ty of not just oth­er cars but obsta­cles of any kind: stop signs, street-crossers, speed traps. This leaves the hero­ic every­man behind the wheel free to take on the straight­aways and curves alike just as he sees fit. But what the stan­dard car com­mer­cial offers in dri­ver wish ful­fill­ment, it lacks in dra­ma: how to tell a sto­ry, after all, about a fea­ture­less char­ac­ter who faces no obsta­cles, sub­ject to no desires beyond those for com­fort and speed? Com­mis­sioned to direct a com­mer­cial for Nis­san’s 300ZX Tur­bo, Rid­ley Scott found a way.

“I’m in a Tur­bo Z,” says the nar­ra­tor of the result­ing spot “Tur­bo Dream,” first broad­cast dur­ing Super Bowl XXIV in 1990. “These guys are after me, but they can’t catch me.” These mys­te­ri­ous pur­suers first chase him on motor­cy­cles, then in an F1 race car, and then in an exper­i­men­tal-look­ing jet. (We’re a long way indeed from Hov­is bread.)

But “just as they’re about to catch me, the twin tur­bos kick in.” Those twin tur­bocharg­ers con­sti­tute only one of the cor­nu­copia of fea­tures avail­able for the 300ZX, then the lat­est mod­el of Nis­san’s “Z‑cars,” a series acclaimed for its com­bi­na­tion of sports-car per­for­mance, lux­u­ry-car fea­tures, and high tech­nol­o­gy. The lin­eage goes all the way back to 1969, when the com­pa­ny intro­duced its Japan­ese Fair­la­dy Z in the U.S. as the 240Z.

For most of the 1960s, “Japan­ese sports car” would have sound­ed like a con­tra­dic­tion in terms. But by the 1990s many once-loy­al Amer­i­can dri­vers had been enticed to defect, not least by the promise of the Z‑car. Tak­en by sur­prise, the colos­sal U.S. auto indus­try did not react char­i­ta­bly to its for­eign com­peti­tors, and the 1980s wave of eco­nom­ic anti-Japan­ese sen­ti­ment swept Amer­i­ca. Hol­ly­wood wast­ed no time cap­i­tal­iz­ing on these feel­ings: count­less action movies began fea­tur­ing cor­po­rate-raid­ing Japan­ese vil­lains, and one of the least shod­dy among them was Black Rain — direct­ed by a cer­tain Rid­ley Scott, who in Blade Run­ner had already real­ized one vision of a thor­ough­ly Japan­i­fied Amer­i­ca.

Black Rain had come out just four months before the broad­cast of “Tur­bo Dream,” and any­one who’d seen the film would sure­ly be remind­ed of its open­ing motor­cy­cle race. The spot did draw a back­lash, but the anger had noth­ing to do with Japan: “The com­mer­cial was protest­ed by groups like the Insur­ance Insti­tute for High­way Safe­ty, the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Gov­er­nors’ High­way Safe­ty Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and oth­ers,” writes Jalop­nik’s Jason Torchin­sky. “The issue was that the ad was thought to glo­ri­fy speed­ing,” and the com­mer­cial nev­er aired again. The 300ZX itself would go on for a few more years, until the Amer­i­can SUV trend and the ris­ing yen-to-dol­lar ratio tem­porar­i­ly retired it in 1997. When they bring the new­ly unveiled Z Pro­to to mar­ket, Nis­san could do worse than enlist­ing Scott to come up with anoth­er tur­bocharged fan­ta­sy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Rid­ley Scott’s 1973 Bread Commercial—Voted England’s Favorite Adver­tise­ment of All Time

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

Film­mak­er Cre­ates a Lux­u­ry-Style Car Com­mer­cial to Sell a 21-Year-Old Used Hon­da Accord

Cars: Past, Present & Future (A Free Course from Stan­ford)

Bob Dylan’s Con­tro­ver­sial 2004 Victoria’s Secret Ad: His First & Last Appear­ance in a Com­mer­cial

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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What Can Superhero Media Teach Us About Ethics: A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast (#63) Discussion with Philosophy Professor Travis Smith

in Comics/Cartoons, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | October 7th, 2020

Is there no end to the seem­ing­ly end­less fas­ci­na­tion with super­hero media? Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Travis Smith, who teach­es polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy at Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­si­ty, to dis­cuss. Travis sees their res­o­nance as a mat­ter of metaphor: How can we do more with the abil­i­ties we have? His book Super­hero Ethics: 10 Com­ic Book Heroes, 10 Ways to Save the World, Which One Do We Need Now? match­es up heroes like Bat­man vs. Spi­der-Man for eth­i­cal com­par­i­son: Both “act local­ly,” but Bat­man would like to actu­al­ly rule over Gotham, while Spi­der-Man engages in a more “friend­ly neigh­bor­hood” patrol.  What phi­los­o­phy should gov­ern the way we try to do good in the world?

Lurk­ing in the back­ground is the cur­rent release of sea­son two of the Ama­zon series The Boys, based on Garth Ennis’ graph­ic nov­els, which assumes that pow­er cor­rupts and asks what reg­u­lar folks might do in the face of cor­po­rate-backed invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. This cyn­i­cal take is part of a long tra­di­tion of ask­ing “what if super-heroes were lit­er­al­ly real?” that goes through Watch­men all the way back to Spi­der-Man him­self, who faces finan­cial and oth­er mun­dane prob­lems that Super­man was immune to.

Giv­en Travis’ book, we did­n’t real­ly need sup­ple­men­tary arti­cles for this episode, but you can take a look at this inter­view with him to learn more about his com­ic book loves and the Cana­di­an her­itage that led him to start fight­ing crime (you know, indi­rect­ly, through eth­i­cal teach­ing).

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

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Watch a Young Carl Sagan Appear in His First TV Documentary, The Violent Universe (1969)

in Astronomy, Science, Television | October 5th, 2020

Much of the world got to know Carl Sagan through Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age, the thir­teen-part PBS series on the nature of the uni­verse — and the inten­si­ty of Sagan’s own pas­sion to dis­cov­er that nature. First aired in 1980, it would become the most wide­ly watched series in the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can pub­lic tele­vi­sion. But it’s not as if Sagan had been lan­guish­ing in obscu­ri­ty before: he’d been pub­lish­ing pop­u­lar books since the ear­ly 1970s, and 1977’s The Drag­ons of Eden: Spec­u­la­tions on the Evo­lu­tion of Human Intel­li­gence won him a Pulitzer Prize. When Cos­mos made its impact, some view­ers may even have remem­bered its host from a series of sim­i­lar­ly themed broad­casts a decade ear­li­er, The Vio­lent Uni­verse.

Pro­duced by the BBC in 1969 and broad­cast just three months before the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing, The Vio­lent Uni­verse (view­able above) explains in five parts a range of dis­cov­er­ies made dur­ing the then-recent “rev­o­lu­tion in astron­o­my,” includ­ing infrared galax­ies, neu­tri­nos, pul­sars and quasars, red giants and white dwarfs.

In so doing it includes footage tak­en in obser­va­to­ries not just across the Earth — Eng­land, Puer­to Rico, Hol­land, Cal­i­for­na — but high above it in orbit and even deep inside it, beneath the bad­lands of South Dako­ta. One install­ment pays a vis­it to Kōchi, the rur­al Japan­ese pre­fec­tur­al cap­i­tal where gui­tarist-astronomer Tsu­to­mu Seki makes his home — and his small home obser­va­to­ry, where he had worked to co-dis­cov­er Comet Ikeya–Seki just four years before.

All of this inter­na­tion­al mate­r­i­al — or rather inter­stel­lar mate­r­i­al — is anchored in the stu­dio by tele­vi­sion jour­nal­ist Robert Mac­Neil, lat­er of PBS’ The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, and a cer­tain pro­fes­sor of astron­o­my at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty by the name of Carl Sagan. Despite exud­ing a more delib­er­ate seri­ous­ness than he would in Cos­mos, the young Sagan nev­er­the­less explains the astro­nom­i­cal and astro­phys­i­cal con­cepts at hand with a clar­i­ty and vig­or that would have made them imme­di­ate­ly clear to tele­vi­sion audi­ences of half a cen­tu­ry ago, and indeed still makes them clear to the Youtube audi­ences of today. Apart, per­haps, from its Twi­light Zone-style theme music The Vio­lent Uni­verse has in its visu­al ele­ments aged more grace­ful­ly than the 70s series that made Sagan into a sci­ence icon. And how many oth­er oth­er pub­lic-tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­taries about the uni­verse include poet­ry recita­tions from Richard Bur­ton?

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan on the Virtues of Mar­i­jua­na (1969)

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

The Pio­neer­ing Physics TV Show, The Mechan­i­cal Uni­verse, Is Now on YouTube: 52 Com­plete Episodes from Cal­tech

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Why James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano Is “the Greatest Acting Achievement Ever Committed to the Screen”: A Video Essay

in Television | September 28th, 2020

The ongo­ing “gold­en age” of pres­tige tele­vi­sion dra­ma began more than twen­ty years ago, but how many shows have tru­ly sur­passed The Sopra­nos, the one that start­ed it all? How­ev­er many series come and go, rais­ing large and often obses­sive fan bases with their vary­ing mix­tures of crime, his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, sci­ence fic­tion, fan­ta­sy, and intrigue, none have shown the cul­tur­al stay­ing pow­er of this six-sea­son tale of a mob boss in turn-of-the-21st-cen­tu­ry New Jer­sey. That The Sopra­nos remains rel­e­vant owes in part to the vision of cre­ator David Chase as well as to the tour de force per­for­mance of star James Gan­dolfi­ni.

Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, has stronger words of appro­ba­tion: Gan­dolfini’s is “prob­a­bly the great­est act­ing achieve­ment ever com­mit­ted to the screen, small or big.” In the video essay “How James Gan­dolfi­ni Nav­i­gates Emo­tion” he mar­shals in sup­port of this claim just one scene, but a scene that fea­tures Gan­dolfi­ni at the height of his dra­mat­ic pow­ers.

Tak­en from the fifth-sea­son episode “Uniden­ti­fied Black Males,” orig­i­nal­ly aired in 2004 (and co-writ­ten by Matthew Wein­er, lat­er to cre­ate the pres­tige-TV fran­chise Mad Men), this selec­tion takes place in the office of Tony’s psy­chi­a­trist Dr. Jen­nifer Melfi, played by Lor­raine Brac­co. (When The Sopra­nos debuted, two months before the pre­miere of Harold Ramis’ Ana­lyze This, a mob­ster in ther­a­py was very much a nov­el idea.)

“Tony Sopra­no is going to have a pan­ic attack in this ther­a­py ses­sion,” says Puschak, and “the way James Gan­dolfi­ni builds to that attack” demon­strates “how he car­ries us with him through a com­plex sequence of emo­tions.” Here Gan­dolfi­ni ris­es to the for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge of lying con­vinc­ing­ly: not con­vinc­ing­ly in the sense that Dr. Melfi believes him, but con­vinc­ing­ly in the sense that we believe the grap­ple with con­flict­ing truths and untruths that char­ac­ter­izes Tony’s life. Tony must pin his recent spate of pan­ic attacks on some­thing oth­er than his cousin Tony B, who com­mit­ted a hit he should­n’t have. That Tony does­n’t quite believe his own words Gan­dolfi­ni trans­mits with “his tone, his eyes, and the tilt of his head.” He uses the musi­cal­i­ty of Tony’s speech, “some com­bi­na­tion of left­over Ital­ian rhythms and a New York-inflect­ed North Jer­sey accent,” to build to “larg­er and larg­er crescen­does.”

As it fore­shad­ows the approach­ing emo­tion­al tur­moil, his “rhyth­mic anger, like waves crash­ing on the shore, is hyp­not­ic, draw­ing you deep­er into his men­tal and emo­tion­al space with each new cycle.” Tony then dou­bles down on his lie, try­ing to cov­er for his cousin by invent­ing on the spot a sto­ry about hav­ing been beat­en up by a gang of shoe thieves in 1986. Only lat­er in the scene does the truth come out, or at least par­tial­ly leak out, even as Gan­dolfi­ni por­trays Tony strug­gling to fight back the pan­ic attack that has emerged as a result of telling these sto­ries. For all the tech­nique it show­cas­es, the scene ends in a clas­si­cal­ly dra­mat­ic fash­ion, with a kind of cathar­sis — which, if you know The Sopra­nos, you know is hard­ly the word Tony has for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Chase Breathed Life into the The Sopra­nos

David Chase Reveals the Philo­soph­i­cal Mean­ing of The Sopra­no’s Final Scene

James Gan­dolfi­ni Reads from Mau­rice Sendak’s Children’s Sto­ry In The Night Kitchen

Rewatch Every Episode of The Sopra­nos with the Talk­ing Sopra­nos Pod­cast, Host­ed by Michael Impe­ri­oli & Steve Schirri­pa

How Humphrey Bog­a­rt Became an Icon: A Video Essay

How David Lynch Manip­u­lates You: A Close Read­ing of Mul­hol­land Dri­ve

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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