Fellini’s Fantastic TV Commercials for Barilla, Campari & More: The Italian Filmmaker Was Born 100 Years Ago Today

in Film, Television | January 20th, 2020

To help cel­e­brate the 100th anniver­sary of the birth of the great Ital­ian film­mak­er Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, we present a series of lyri­cal tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments made dur­ing the final decade of his life.

In 1984, when he was 64 years old, Felli­ni agreed to make a minia­ture film fea­tur­ing Cam­pari, the famous Ital­ian apéri­tif. The result, Oh, che bel pae­sag­gio! (“Oh, what a beau­ti­ful land­scape!”), shown above, fea­tures a man and a woman seat­ed across from one anoth­er on a long-dis­tance train.

The man (played by Vic­tor Polet­ti) smiles, but the woman (Sil­via Dion­i­sio) averts her eyes, star­ing sul­len­ly out the win­dow and pick­ing up a remote con­trol to switch the scenery. She grows increas­ing­ly exas­per­at­ed as a sequence of desert and medieval land­scapes pass by. Still smil­ing, the man takes the remote con­trol, clicks it, and the beau­ti­ful Cam­po di Mira­coli (“Field of Mir­a­cles”) of Pisa appears in the win­dow, embell­ished by a tow­er­ing bot­tle of Cam­pari.

“In just one minute,” writes Tul­lio Kezich in Fed­eri­co Felli­ni: His Life and Work, “Felli­ni gives us a chap­ter of the sto­ry of the bat­tle between men and women, and makes ref­er­ence to the neu­ro­sis of TV, insin­u­ates that we’re dis­parag­ing the mirac­u­lous gifts of nature and his­to­ry, and offers the hope that there might be a screen that will bring the joy back. The lit­tle tale is as quick as a train and has a remark­ably light touch.”

Also in 1984, Felli­ni made a com­mer­cial titled Alta Soci­eta (“High Soci­ety”) for Bar­il­la riga­toni pas­ta (above). As with the Cam­pari com­mer­cial, Felli­ni wrote the script him­self and col­lab­o­rat­ed with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ennio Guarnieri and musi­cal direc­tor Nico­la Pio­vani. The cou­ple in the restau­rant were played by Gre­ta Vaian and Mau­r­izio Mau­ri. The Bar­il­la spot is per­haps the least inspired of Fellini’s com­mer­cials. Bet­ter things were yet to come.

In 1991 Felli­ni made a series of three com­mer­cials for the Bank of Rome called Che Brutte Not­ti or “The Bad Nights.” “These com­mer­cials, aired the fol­low­ing year,” writes Peter Bon­danel­la in The Films of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, “are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing, since they find their inspi­ra­tion in var­i­ous dreams Felli­ni had sketched out in his dream note­books dur­ing his career.”

In the episode above, titled “The Pic­nic Lunch Dream,” the clas­sic damsel-in-dis­tress sce­nario is turned upside down when a man (played by Pao­lo Vil­lag­gio) finds him­self trapped on the rail­road tracks with a train bear­ing down on him while the beau­ti­ful woman he was din­ing with (Anna Falchi) climbs out of reach and taunts him. But it’s all a dream, which the man tells to his psy­cho­an­a­lyst (Fer­nan­do Rey). The ana­lyst inter­prets the dream and assures the man that his nights will be rest­ful if he puts his mon­ey in the Ban­co di Roma.

The oth­er com­mer­cials (watch here) are called “The Tun­nel Dream” and “The Dream of the Lion in the Cel­lar.” (You can watch Rober­to Di Vito’s short, untrans­lat­ed film of Felli­ni and his crew work­ing on the project here.)

The bank com­mer­cials were the last films Felli­ni ever made. He died a year after they aired, at age 73. In Kezich’s view, the deeply per­son­al and imag­i­na­tive ads amount to Fellini’s last tes­ta­ment, a brief but won­drous return to form. “In Fed­eri­co’s life,” he writes, “these three com­mer­cial spots are a kind of Indi­an sum­mer, the gold­en autumn of a patri­arch of cin­e­ma who, for a moment, holds again the reins of cre­ation.”

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Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fellini’s Three Bank of Rome Com­mer­cials, the Last Thing He Did Behind a Cam­era (1992)

Watch All of the Com­mer­cials That David Lynch Has Direct­ed: A Big 30-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

Ing­mar Bergman’s 1950s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

All of Wes Anderson’s Cin­e­mat­ic Com­mer­cials: Watch His Spots for Pra­da, Amer­i­can Express, H&M & More

 

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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #27 Discusses the Impact and Aesthetics of Star Wars

in Film, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | January 16th, 2020

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is PMP-For-the-Love-of-Star-Wars-400-x-800.jpg

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt grasp the low-hang­ing fruit in pop cul­ture to talk about Star Wars: The unique place that these films have in the brains of peo­ple of a cer­tain age, how we grap­pled with the pre­quels, and why we feel the need to fill in and argue about the details.

We pri­mar­i­ly focus on the two most recent ema­na­tions of this beast, The Man­dalo­ri­an and Rise of Sky­walk­er. We talk alien and droid aes­thet­ics (how much cute­ness is too much?), sto­ry­telling for kids vs. adults reliv­ing their child­hood, pac­ing, plot­ting, cast­ing, whether celebri­ty appear­ances ruin the Star Wars mood, cre­ation by an auteur vs. a com­mit­tee, and what we’d like to see next.

We had enough to say about this that we did­n’t need to draw on online arti­cles, but here’s a sam­pling of what we looked at any­way:

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. In this case, it’s all just more Star Wars talk, cov­er­ing droid body dys­mor­phia and human­iza­tion, the cycle of embod­i­ment via action fig­ures and re-pre­sen­ta­tion on the screen, tragedy in Star Wars vs. Watch­men, mak­ing up for racism in Star Wars through sym­pa­thet­ic por­tray­als of Sand Per­son cul­ture, watch­ing par­tic­u­lar scenes many times, clown bik­er troop­ers, and more. Don’t miss it!

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 or start with the first episode.

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The First & Last Time Mister Rogers Sang “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” (1968–2001)

in K-12, Life, Television | January 13th, 2020

Mr. Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood, the icon­ic tele­vi­sion series that ran from 1968 to 2001, is a major child­hood touch­stone for so many.

Raise your hand if you have a Pavlov­ian response to the famil­iar open­ing seg­ment, in which Fred Rogers opens the front door to his hum­ble liv­ing room set, heads to the clos­et, singing, to exchange his jack­et for a com­fy cardi­gan sweater, and then sits on a wood­en deacon’s bench to swap out his street shoes for a pair of can­vas sneak­ers.

As per the show’s web­site, this rou­tine was a promise of sorts to view­ers:

I care about you, no mat­ter who you are and no mat­ter what you can or can­not do… Let’s spend this time togeth­er. We’ll build a rela­tion­ship and talk and imag­ine and sing about things that mat­ter to you.

Fans of all ages—some too young to have caught the show in its orig­i­nal run—have post­ed over 28,000 grate­ful, emo­tion­al com­ments on the video, above, which teams the open­ing seg­ment of the first episode, Feb­ru­ary 19, 1968, with that of the last episode, August 31, 2001.

The biggest change seems to be the move from black-and-white to col­or.

Oth­er­wise, the tweaks are decid­ed­ly minor.

The wood­en doors are replaced with sim­i­lar mod­els sport­ing cast iron hinges.

The win­dow seat gets some pil­lows.

The shut­ters give way to cafe cur­tains, open to reveal a bit of stu­dio foliage.

A fish tank is installed near the traf­fic light that sig­naled the start of every episode.

The clos­et fills with bright sweaters, many hand knit by Mr. Rogers’ mom—at some point, these tran­si­tioned from but­tons to zip­pers, which were eas­i­er to manip­u­late and were qui­eter near his body mic.

(Once, Mr. Rogers but­toned his sweater wrong, but opt­ed not to reshoot. Cast mem­ber David “Mr. McFeely” Newell recalled that his friend saw the on-cam­era boo boo as an oppor­tu­ni­ty “to show chil­dren that peo­ple make mis­takes.”)

There are the framed trol­ley prints and Pic­ture Pic­ture, as con­stant and unfash­ion­able as the braid­ed rug and Bicen­ten­ni­al rock­ing chairs that were a fea­ture of my grand­par­ents’ house.

It’s such a good feel­ing, a very good feel­ing, to see how loy­al Rogers and his pro­duc­ers were to these famil­iar ele­ments through­out the decades.

Brace your­self, friends.

Mr. Rogers was kind of over these open­ers.

As his wife, Joanne Rogers, told The New York Times in 2001, a few months before the final episode aired:

He does­n’t miss the show. I think he miss­es the Neigh­bor­hood of Make-Believe because he enjoyed work­ing with peo­ple around him. He real­ly loves all of them, and he’ll keep in touch. But he did not enjoy what he called ‘inte­ri­ors,’ the begin­ning and end­ings of the pro­grams. He had got­ten where he had real­ly dread­ed it so.

It wasn’t so much the repet­i­tive nature of the greet­ing as the need to put on make­up and con­tact lens­es, a telegenic con­sid­er­a­tion that didn’t fac­tor in to the old black-and-white days. Mr Rogers said that he would have pre­ferred pre­sent­ing him­self to the camera—and to the neigh­bors watch­ing at home—exactly as he did to his friends and neigh­bors in real life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers’ Nine Rules for Speak­ing to Chil­dren (1977)

When Fred Rogers and Fran­cois Clem­mons Broke Down Race Bar­ri­ers on a His­toric Episode of Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood (1969)

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York, The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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

in Television | January 9th, 2020

Just as the avun­cu­lar pres­ence of Ed Sul­li­van helped ease mid­dle Amer­i­ca into accept­ing Elvis Pres­ley and The Bea­t­les, the aw-shucks mid­west­ern charm of Dick Cavett made Wood­stock hip­pies seem down­right cud­dly when he had Jef­fer­son Air­plane, David Cros­by, and Joni Mitchell on just after the leg­endary music fes­ti­val in 1969. He had a way of mak­ing every­one around him com­fort­able enough to reveal just a lit­tle more than they might oth­er­wise. (See Jimi Hen­drix talk about his Nation­al Anthem per­for­mance, below.)

Born in Nebras­ka in 1937, “the only per­sona [Cavett] both­ered to, or need­ed to, devel­op for work­ing on cam­era was of a boy from Nebras­ka daz­zled by the bright lights of New York,” as Clive James writes in an appre­ci­a­tion of the TV host. As he inter­viewed the biggest stars of late six­ties, sev­en­ties, and eight­ies on the long-run­ning Dick Cavett Show, Cavett’s easy­go­ing Mid­west­ern demeanor dis­armed both his guests and audi­ences. He kept them engaged with his eru­di­tion, quick wit, and breadth of cul­tur­al knowl­edge.

Cavett, writes James, was “the most dis­tin­guished talk-show host in Amer­i­ca… a true sophis­ti­cate with a daunt­ing intel­lec­tu­al range.” He was also an empath­ic inter­view­er who could lead his guests beyond the stock respons­es they were used to giv­ing in TV inter­views. (David Bowie, below, reveals how he was influ­enced by his fans.)

A trained gym­nast and self-taught magician—Cavett met fel­low magi­cian John­ny Car­son in the ear­ly 50s at a mag­ic convention—the talk-show host left Nebras­ka for Yale and nev­er looked back. (He once joked, quot­ing Abe Bur­rows, “How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen the farm?”) After col­lege, he moved to New York to pur­sue act­ing. There, he got his first com­e­dy writ­ing job, when he hand­ed some of his jokes to Tonight Show host Jack Paar in an ele­va­tor. He befriend­ed Stan Lau­rel, Grou­cho Marx, and all the biggest names in com­e­dy, and wrote for Jer­ry Lewis and Merv Grif­fin.

Once he had his own late-night talk show, how­ev­er, which ran oppo­site John­ny Carson’s Tonight Show, it became clear that he was doing some­thing very dif­fer­ent. “Cavett nev­er mugged, nev­er whooped it up for the audi­ence, rarely told a for­mal­ly con­struct­ed joke, and lis­tened to the guest,” writes James. He became “famous enough not to be able to go out except in dis­guise,” but “his style did not suit a mass audi­ence.” This is what made—and still makes—Cavett worth watch­ing.

He had Bri­an de Pal­ma and Mar­tin Scors­ese on to talk about how they’re each other’s best crit­ics, and Scors­ese revealed that he did addi­tion­al shoot­ing for The Last Waltz after De Pal­ma saw it.

Robin Williams came on to demon­strate his devel­op­ing Pop­eye voice dur­ing the shoot­ing of the Robert Alt­man film in 1979. In the clip above, he talks about feel­ing like “a mon­key on a string” and work­ing through his depres­sion.

Lucille Ball told the sto­ry of her ear­ly years in show busi­ness, and her time work­ing as a mod­el, and Dick Van Dyke talked frankly about his alco­holism and the stig­ma sur­round­ing addic­tion.

These are just a few of the 270+ sur­pris­ing clips you’ll find on the Dick Cavett Show YouTube chan­nel, where George Car­lin, Muham­mad Ali, Mar­lon Bran­do, George Har­ri­son, John Lennon, Ian McK­ellen, Julie Andrews, and too many more stars to name say things they rarely said any­where else, as Cavett draws them out and keeps them talk­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dick Cavett’s Wide-Rang­ing TV Inter­view with Ing­mar Bergman and Lead Actress Bibi Ander­s­son (1971)

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

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

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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #26 Discusses Alan Moore’s Watchmen Comic and the HBO Show with Cornell Psychology Professor David Pizarro

in Comics/Cartoons, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | January 9th, 2020

Per­haps the most laud­ed graph­ic nov­el has been sequelized for HBO, and amaz­ing­ly, it turned out pret­ty darn well (with a 96% Rot­ten Toma­toes rat­ing!).

Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by the Cor­nel­l’s David Pizarro, host of the pop­u­lar Very Bad Wiz­ards pod­cast. We con­sid­er Alan Moore’s 1986 graph­ic nov­el, the 2009 Zack Sny­der film, and of course most­ly the recent­ly com­plet­ed (we hope) show by Damon Lin­de­lof, the cre­ator of Lost and The Left­overs.

How does Moore’s idio­syn­crat­ic writ­ing style trans­late to the screen? Did the show make best use of its nine hours? Are there oth­er sto­ries in this alter­nate his­to­ry that should still be told, per­haps to reflect on oth­er recur­rent social ills or crises of what­ev­er moment might be depict­ed? Was Lin­de­lof real­ly the guy to tell this sto­ry about race, and does mak­ing the show about racism (which is bad!) under­mine Moore’s rejec­tion of (moral­ly) black-and-white heroes and vil­lains?

Some of the arti­cles we used to warm up for this dis­cus­sion includ­ed:

You might want to also check out HBO’s Watch­men page, which includes extra essays and the offi­cial pod­cast with Damon Lin­de­lof com­ment­ing on the episodes.

Fol­low Dave @peez. Hear him on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, undoubt­ed­ly the apex of his pro­fes­sion­al career.

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 or start with the first episode.

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A Map of the Disney Entertainment Empire Reveals the Deep Connections Between Its Movies, Its Merchandise, Disneyland & More (1967)

in Business, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Television | January 8th, 2020

We all remem­ber the first Dis­ney movie we ever saw. In most of our child­hoods, one Dis­ney movie led to anoth­er, which stoked in us the desire for Dis­ney toys, Dis­ney games, Dis­ney comics, Dis­ney music, and so on. If we were lucky, we might also take a trip to Dis­ney­land or one of its descen­dants else­where in the world. Many of us spent the bulk of our youngest years as hap­py res­i­dents of the Dis­ney enter­tain­ment empire; some of us, into adult­hood or even old age, remain there still.

Die-hard Dis­ney fans appre­ci­ate that the world of Dis­ney — com­pris­ing not just films and theme parks but tele­vi­sion shows, print­ed mat­ter, attrac­tions on the inter­net, and mer­chan­dise of near­ly every kind — is too vast ever to com­pre­hend, let alone ful­ly explore.

It was already big half a cen­tu­ry ago, but not too big to grasp. You can see the whole of the oper­a­tion laid out in this orga­ni­za­tion­al syn­er­gy dia­gram cre­at­ed by Walt Dis­ney Pro­duc­tions in 1967. Depict­ing “the many and var­ied syn­er­gis­tic rela­tion­ships between the divi­sions of Walt Dis­ney Pro­duc­tions,” the infor­ma­tion graph­ic reveals the links between each divi­sion.

Along the arrow­head­ed lines indi­cat­ing the flows of man­pow­er, mate­r­i­al, and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, “short tex­tu­al descrip­tions show what each divi­sion sup­plies and con­tributes to the oth­ers.” The motion pic­ture divi­sion “feeds tunes and tal­ent” to the music divi­sion, for exam­ple, which “pro­motes pre­mi­ums for tie-ins” to the mer­chan­dise licens­ing depart­ment, which “feeds ideas for retail items” to WED Enter­pris­es (the hold­ing com­pa­ny found­ed by Walt Dis­ney in 1950), which pro­duces “audio-ani­ma­tron­ics” for Dis­ney­land.

Some of the nexus­es on the dia­gram will be as famil­iar as Mick­ey Mouse, Goofy, Tin­ker­bell, and the char­ac­ters cavort­ing here and there around it. Oth­ers will be less so: the 16-mil­lime­ter films divi­sion, for instance, which would even­tu­al­ly be replaced by a colos­sal home-video divi­sion (itself sure­ly being eat­en into, now, by stream­ing). The Celebri­ty Sports Cen­ter, an indoor enter­tain­ment com­plex out­side Den­ver, closed in 1994. MAPO refers to a theme-park ani­ma­tron­ics unit formed in the 1960s with the prof­its of Mary Pop­pins (hence its name) and dis­solved in 2012. And as for Min­er­al King, a pro­posed ski resort in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Sequoia Nation­al Park, it was nev­er even built.

“The ski resort was one of sev­er­al ambi­tious projects that Walt Dis­ney spear­head­ed in the years before his death in 1966,” writes Nathan Mas­ters at Giz­mo­do. But as the size of the Min­er­al King plans grew, wilder­ness-activist oppo­si­tion inten­si­fied. After years of oppo­si­tion by the Sier­ra Club, as well as the pas­sage of the Nation­al Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy Act 1970 and the Nation­al Parks and Recre­ation Act of 1978, cor­po­rate inter­est in the project final­ly fiz­zled out. Though that would no doubt have come as a dis­ap­point­ment to Walt Dis­ney him­self, he might also have known to keep the fail­ure in per­spec­tive. As he once said of the empire bear­ing his name, “I only hope that we nev­er lose sight of one thing — that it was all start­ed by a mouse.”

h/t Eli and via Howard Low­ery

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­ney­land 1957: A Lit­tle Stroll Down Mem­o­ry Lane

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made: 1939 Doc­u­men­tary Gives an Inside Look

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era

Disney’s 12 Time­less Prin­ci­ples of Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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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Itzhak Perlman Appears on Sesame Street and Poignantly Shows Kids How to Play the Violin and Push Through Life’s Limits (1981)

in Education, Health, K-12, Life, Music, Television | December 30th, 2019

I always cham­pi­on any­thing that will improve the lives of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and put it on the front burn­er. — Itzhak Perl­man

At its best, the Inter­net expands our hori­zons, intro­duc­ing us to new inter­ests and per­spec­tives, forg­ing con­nec­tions and cre­at­ing empa­thy.

The edu­ca­tion­al chil­dren’s series Sesame Street was doing all that decades ear­li­er.

Wit­ness this brief clip from 1981, star­ring vio­lin vir­tu­oso Itzhak Perl­man and a six-year-old stu­dent from the Man­hat­tan School of Music.

For many child—and per­haps adult—viewers, this excerpt pre­sent­ed their first sig­nif­i­cant encounter with clas­si­cal musi­cal and/or dis­abil­i­ty.

The lit­tle girl scam­pers up the steps to the stage as Perl­man, who relies on crutch­es and a motor­ized scoot­er to get around, fol­lows behind, heav­ing a sigh of relief as he low­ers him­self into his seat.

Already the point has been made that what is easy to the point of uncon­scious­ness for some presents a chal­lenge for oth­ers.

Then each takes a turn on their vio­lin.

Perlman’s skills are, of course, unpar­al­leled, and the young girl’s seem pret­ty excep­tion­al, too, par­tic­u­lar­ly to those of us who nev­er man­aged to get the hang of an instru­ment. (She began lessons at 3, and told the Suzu­ki Asso­ci­a­tion of the Amer­i­c­as that her Sesame Street appear­ance with Perl­man was the “high­light of [her] pro­fes­sion­al career.”)

In the near­ly 40 years since this episode first aired, pub­lic aware­ness of dis­abil­i­ty and acces­si­bil­i­ty has become more nuanced, a devel­op­ment Perl­man dis­cussed in a 2014 inter­view with the Wall Street Jour­nal, below.

Hav­ing resent­ed the way ear­ly fea­tures about him invari­ably show­cased his dis­abil­i­ty, he found that he missed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to advo­cate for oth­ers when men­tions dropped off.

Trans­paren­cy cou­pled with celebri­ty pro­vides him with a mighty plat­form. Here he is speak­ing in the East Room of the White House in 2015, on the day that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma hon­ored him with the Medal of Free­dom:

And his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Sesame Street have con­tin­ued through­out the decades, includ­ing per­for­mances of “You Can Clean Almost Any­thing” (to the tune of Bach’s Par­ti­ta for Solo Vio­lin), “Put Down the Duck­ie,” Pagli­ac­ci’s Vesti la giub­ba (back­ing up Placido Flamin­go), and Beethoven’s Min­uet in G, below.

Read more of Perlman’s thoughts on dis­abil­i­ty, and enroll in his Mas­ter Class here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Great Vio­lin­ists Play­ing as Kids: Itzhak Perl­man, Anne-Sophie Mut­ter, & More

Philip Glass Com­pos­es Music for a Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion (1979)

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 6 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates Cape-Cod­di­ties by Roger Liv­ingston Scaife (1920). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Bob Ross’ Christmas Special: Celebrate, Relax, Nod Off

in Television | December 25th, 2019

I don’t know if you got every­thing you want­ed on Christ­mas, but we here at Open Cul­ture have what you need. And that’s a very spe­cial Bob Ross Christ­mas Spe­cial. No spe­cial guests, no musi­cal num­bers. Just Bob, his palette filled with phtha­lo blue, Van dyke Brown, and oth­er favorite paints, and a sol­id black can­vas which Bob turns into a Christ­mas Eve snow scene. (In 2018, Ross’ offi­cial YouTube Chan­nel post­ed all 31 sea­sons of The Joy of Paint­ing online, a total of 403 episodes.)

While watch­ing (and maybe fol­low­ing along at home), con­sid­er that Bob Ross acci­den­tal­ly invent­ed ASMR with his shows, all those years ago. His pleas­ant, slight­ly gruff south­ern accent com­ple­ments the sound of the swish­ing brush and scrap­ing knife on can­vas. Con­sid­er also the per­cent­age of peo­ple who watch these not to paint, but to med­i­tate or go to sleep. (There’s an app for that.)

Bob Ross *is* the sound of a Christ­mas Eve noc­turne, a moment when the air is crisp and clean, a lit­tle bit of peace falls over the world, and there’s a chance to reflect. It’s time to start a new can­vas. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less, and you can always change as you go. Heed Ross’ famous words: “We don’t make mis­takes. We have hap­py acci­dents.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers Goes to Con­gress and Saves PBS: Heart­warm­ing Video from 1969

Pup­pet Mak­ing with Jim Hen­son: A Price­less Primer from 1969

A Big List of Free Art Lessons on YouTube

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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