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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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #24 Considers Holiday Viewing: What’s Canon?

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | December 24th, 2019

Join Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt for a spe­cial “snake draft,” where we take turns pick­ing the hol­i­day films and TV spe­cials that we think are (or should be) part of Amer­i­ca’s year­ly view­ing tra­di­tions.

Were I to list all the shows and films we men­tion, that would give away our picks now, would­n’t it? Com­pare your intu­itions about what is clas­sic or sem­i­nal or over-rat­ed with ours!

Here are some arti­cles with most of the like­ly sus­pects to get you warmed up:

We did NOT before­hand actu­al­ly look at IMD­B’s Top 25 Christ­mas Movies or their Great­est Christ­mas Spe­cials list, but YOU cer­tain­ly can. Nei­ther did we look this rank­ing of the var­i­ous ver­sions of A Christ­mas Car­ol by Dave Trum­bore. While we’re at it, here are times where TV shows ripped off It’s a Won­der­ful Life.

Oth­er ref­er­ences and infor­ma­tion: 

When does A Christ­mas Sto­ry take place? 1940; read triv­ia about that film. The Dare Daniel pod­cast has a bru­tal take-down of the lit­tle-seen 2012 sequel  that serves as a great sub­sti­tute for actu­al­ly view­ing that pile of garbage.

You can watch the quick ver­sion of the very fun­ny Riff­trax run­ning com­men­tary on the Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial on YouTube or buy the whole thing. Did George Lucas real­ly want to smash all copies of it as Mark said?

Bri­an refers to this arti­cle, “Diag­nos­ing the Home Alone Bur­glars’ Injuries: A Pro­fes­sion­al Weighs In” by Lau­ren Hansen.

It’s actu­al­ly the Thanks­giv­ing Char­lie Brown spe­cial that has been blast­ed as racist, not the Xmas one. Here’s an arti­cle about the his­to­ry of Franklin being includ­ed in the strip.

When­ev­er dis­cussing or watch­ing It’s a Won­der­ful Life, I can’t help but think of the Sat­ur­day Night Live “lost end­ing” to the film.

This episode includes 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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David Lynch Turns Twin Peaks into a Virtual Reality Game: Watch the Official Trailer

in Games, Technology, Television | December 11th, 2019

When David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks pre­miered on ABC in 1990, view­ers across Amer­i­ca were treat­ed to a tele­vi­su­al expe­ri­ence like none they’d ever had before. Four years ear­li­er, some­thing sim­i­lar had hap­pened to the unsus­pect­ing movie­go­ers who went to see Lynch’s break­out fea­ture Blue Vel­vet, an expe­ri­ence described as eye-open­ing by even David Fos­ter Wal­lace. A ded­i­cat­ed med­i­ta­tor with an inter­est in plung­ing into unex­plored realms of con­scious­ness, Lynch tends to bring his audi­ence right along with him in his work, whether that work be cin­e­ma, tele­vi­sion, visu­al art, music, or com­ic strips. Only nat­ur­al, then, that Lynch would take an inter­est in the artis­tic and expe­ri­en­tial pos­si­bil­i­ties of vir­tu­al real­i­ty.

Last year we fea­tured the first glimpse of a Twin Peaks vir­tu­al real­i­ty expe­ri­ence in devel­op­ment, revealed at Lynch’s Fes­ti­val of Dis­rup­tion in Los Ange­les. “The best news is that the com­pa­ny devel­op­ing the game, Col­lid­er Games, is giv­ing cre­ative con­trol to Lynch,” wrote Ted Mills, and now, with the release of Twin Peaks VR’s offi­cial trail­er, we can get a clear­er idea of what Lynch has planned for play­ers. As Lau­ra Snoad writes at It’s Nice That, Lynch has used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to revis­it “well-known envi­ron­ments fea­tured in the series, such as the icon­ic Red Room (the stripy-floored, vel­vet cur­tain-clad par­al­lel uni­verse where Agent Coop­er meets mur­dered teen Lau­ra Palmer), the Twin Peaks’ Sheriff’s Depart­ment and the pine-filled for­est around the fic­tion­al Wash­ing­ton town.”

This will come as good news indeed to those of us Twin Peaks enthu­si­asts who’ve made the pil­grim­age to Sno­qualmie, North Bend, and Fall City, the real-life Wash­ing­ton towns where Lynch and his col­lab­o­ra­tors shot the series. But Twin Peak VR will offer a greater vari­ety of chal­lenges than snap­ping pho­tos of the series’ loca­tions and chat­ting with bemused locals: Snoad writes that each envi­ron­ment is con­struct­ed like an escape room. “Solv­ing puz­zles to help Agent Coop­er and Gor­don Cole (the FBI agent played by Lynch him­self), play­ers will also meet some of the show’s weird and ter­ri­fy­ing char­ac­ters, from the back­wards-speak­ing inhab­i­tants of the Black Lodge to the ter­ri­fy­ing Bob him­self.”

Avail­able via Steam on Ocu­lus Rift, Vive, and Valve Index this month, with Ocu­lus Quest and PlaySta­tion VR ver­sions sched­uled, Twin Peaks VR should give a fair few vir­tu­al-real­i­ty hold­outs a com­pelling rea­son to put on the gog­gles — much as Twin Peaks the show caused the cinéastes of the 1990s to break down and watch evening TV. Enjoy­ing Lynch’s work, what­ev­er its medi­um, has always felt like plung­ing into a dream: not like watch­ing his dream, but expe­ri­enc­ing a dream he’s made for us. If vir­tu­al-real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy has final­ly come any­where close to the vivid­ness of Lynch’s imag­i­na­tion, Twin Peaks VR will mark the next step in his artis­tic evo­lu­tion. But for now, to para­phrase no less a Lynch fan than Wal­lace, the one thing we can say with total con­fi­dence is that it will be… Lynchi­an.

via It’s Nice That

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

David Lynch Is Cre­at­ing a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Expe­ri­ence for Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks Tarot Cards Now Avail­able as 78-Card Deck

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

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

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 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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Pretty Much Pop #22 Untangles Time-Travel Scenarios in the Terminator Franchise and Other Media

in Film, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | December 11th, 2019

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is PMP-Untangling-Time-Travel-400-x-800.jpg

Time-trav­el rules in The Ter­mi­na­tor fran­chise are noto­ri­ous­ly incon­sis­tent. Is it pos­si­ble for some­one from the future to trav­el back­wards to change events, giv­en the para­dox that with a changed future, the trav­el­er would­n’t then have had the prob­lem to try to come back and fix? Nei­ther the closed-loop series of events in the first Ter­mi­na­tor film nor the changed (post­poned) future in the sec­ond make sense, and mat­ters just get worse through the sub­se­quent films.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Bri­an’s broth­er and co-author Ken Ger­ber to talk through the var­i­ous time trav­el rule­sets and plot sce­nar­ios (a good starter list is at tvtropes.org), cov­er­ing Dr. Who, Back to the Future, Loop­er, Dark (the Ger­man TV show), time loop films a la Ground­hog Day (Edge of Tomor­row, Hap­py Death Day), time-trav­el come­dies (Future Man), his­tor­i­cal tourism (Mr. Peabody and Sher­man), Time­cop’s “The same mat­ter can­not occu­py the same space,” using time-trav­el to sen­ti­men­tal­ize (About Time) or clone your­self (see that Brak Show episode about avoid­ing home­work), and freez­ing time (like in the old Twi­light Zone).

Some arti­cles we looked at includ­ed:

You can find the Bri­an and Ken short sto­ries we talk about at gerberbrothers.net. Lis­ten to them pod­cast togeth­er and read the sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries they pub­lish at constellary.com. The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast episode Mark host­ed where the dan­gers of AI are dis­cussed is #108 with Nick Bostrom.

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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Improv Comedy (Live and Otherwise) Examined on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #20

in Comedy, Film, Pretty Much Pop, Television, Theatre | November 20th, 2019

 

What role does improv com­e­dy play in pop­u­lar cul­ture? It shows up in the work of cer­tain film direc­tors (like Christo­pher Guest, Adam McK­ay, and Robert Alt­man) and has sur­faced in some of the TV work of Lar­ry David, Robin Williams, et al. But only in the rare case of a show like Whose Line Is It Any­way? is the pres­ence of impro­vi­sa­tion obvi­ous. So is this art form doomed to live on the fringes of enter­tain­ment? Is it maybe of more appar­ent ben­e­fit to its prac­ti­tion­ers than to audi­ences?

Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an are joined by Tim Snif­f­en, announc­er on the pop­u­lar Hel­lo From the Mag­ic Tav­ern pod­cast, and a mem­ber of the Impro­vised Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and Baby Wants Can­dy (impro­vised musi­cals). He’s also writ­ten for Live From Here and oth­er things. We dis­cuss dif­fer­ent types of improv, a bit of the his­to­ry and struc­ture of Sec­ond City, improv’s alleged self-help ben­e­fits, how impro­vi­sa­tion relates to reg­u­lar act­ing, writ­ing, pod­cast­ing, and oth­er arts, and more.

Here are a few improv pro­duc­tions to check out:

For fur­ther read­ing, check out:

For musi­cal improv, try Naked­ly Exam­ined Music #30 with Paul Wer­ti­co and David Cain, and also #55 with Don Pre­ston (Zappa’s key­boardist) whom Mark quot­ed in this dis­cus­sion.

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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82 Animated Interviews with Living, Dead, Celebrated & Sometimes Disgraced Celebrities

in Animation, Film, Music, Television | November 19th, 2019

Who wants to live in the present? It’s such a lim­it­ing peri­od, com­pared to the past.

—Roger Ebert, Play­boy 1990

Were Ebert alive today would he still express him­self thus­ly in a record­ed inter­view? His remarks are spe­cif­ic to his cin­e­mat­ic pas­sion, but still. As a smart Mid­west­ern­er, he would have real­ized that the corn has ears and the pota­toes have eyes. Remarks can be tak­en out of con­text. (Wit­ness the above.)

Recent his­to­ry has shown that not every­one is keen to roll back the clock—women, peo­ple of col­or, and gen­der non-con­form­ing indi­vid­u­als have been reclaim­ing their nar­ra­tives in record num­bers, air­ing secrets, expos­ing injus­tice, and artic­u­lat­ing offens­es that can no longer stand.

If pow­er­ful, old­er, white het­ero­sex­u­al men in the enter­tain­ment busi­ness are exer­cis­ing ver­bal cau­tion these days when speak­ing as a mat­ter of pub­lic record, there’s some good­ly cause for that.

It also makes the archival celebri­ty inter­views excerpt­ed for Quot­ed Stu­dios’ ani­mat­ed series, Blank on Blank, feel very vibrant and uncen­sored, though be fore­warned that your blood may boil a bit just review­ing the celebri­ty line up—Michael Jack­son, Woody Allen, Clint East­wood hold­ing forth on the Pussy Gen­er­a­tion 10 years before the Pussy­hat Project legit­imized com­mon usage of that charged word….

(In full dis­clo­sure, Blank on Blank is an oft-report­ed favorite here at Open Cul­ture.)

Here’s rap­per Tupac Skakur, a year and a half before he was killed in a dri­ve by shoot­ing, cast­ing him­self as a trag­ic Shake­speare­an hero,

His mus­ings on how dif­fer­ent­ly the pub­lic would have viewed him had he been born white seem even more rel­e­vant today. Read­ers who are only pass­ing­ly acquaint­ed with his artis­tic out­put and leg­end may be sur­prised to hear him trac­ing his alle­giance to “thug life” to the pos­i­tive role he saw the Black Pan­thers play­ing in his sin­gle mother’s life when he was a child.

On the oth­er hand, Shakur’s lav­ish and freely expressed self pity at the way the press report­ed on his rape charge (for which he even­tu­al­ly served 9 months) does not sit at all well in 2019, nor did it in 1994.

Like the major­i­ty of Blank on Blank entries, the record­ing was not the interview’s final form, but rather a jour­nal­is­tic ref­er­ence. Ani­ma­tor Patrick Smith may add a lay­er of visu­al edi­to­r­i­al, but in terms of nar­ra­tion, every sub­ject is telling their own undi­lut­ed truth.

It is inter­est­ing to keep in mind that this was one of the first inter­views the Blank on Blank team tack­led, in 2013.

Six years lat­er, it’s hard to imag­ine they would risk choos­ing that por­tion of the inter­view to ani­mate. Had Shakur lived, would he be can­celled?

Guess who was the star of the very first Blank on Blank to air on PBS back in 2013?

Broad­cast­er and tele­vi­sion host Lar­ry King. While King has stead­fast­ly rebutted accu­sa­tions of grop­ing, we sus­pect that if the Blank on Blank team was just now get­ting around to this sub­ject, they’d focus on a dif­fer­ent part of his 2001 Esquire pro­file than the part where he regales inter­view­er Cal Fuss­man with tales of pre-cell­phone “seduc­tion.”

It’s only been six years since the series’ debut, but it’s a dif­fer­ent world for sure.

If you’re among the eas­i­ly trig­gered, liv­ing leg­end Meryl Streep’s thoughts on beau­ty, har­vest­ed in 2014 from a 2008 con­ver­sa­tion with Enter­tain­ment Weekly’s Chris­tine Spines, won’t offer total respite, but any indig­na­tion you feel will be in sup­port of, not because of this celebri­ty sub­ject.

It’s actu­al­ly pret­ty rous­ing to hear her mer­ri­ly expos­ing Hol­ly­wood play­ers’ pig­gish­ness, sev­er­al years before the Har­vey Wein­stein scan­dal broke.

For even more evi­dence of “a dif­fer­ent world,” check out inter­view­er Howard Smith’s remark to Janis Joplin in her final inter­view-cum-Blank-on-Blank episode, four days before here 1970 death:

A lot of women have been say­ing that the whole field of rock music is noth­ing more than a big male chau­vin­ist rip off and when I say, “Yeah, what about Janis Joplin? She made it,” they say, “Oh…her.” It seems to both­er a lot of women’s lib peo­ple that you’re kind of so up front sex­u­al­ly.

Joplin, stung, unleash­es a string of invec­tives against fem­i­nists and women, in gen­er­al. One has to won­der if this reac­tion was Smith’s goal all along. Or maybe I’m just hav­ing flash­backs to mid­dle school, when the pop­u­lar girls would always send a del­e­gate dis­guised as a con­cerned friend to tell you why you were being shunned, prefer­ably in a high­ly pub­lic glad­i­a­to­r­i­al are­na such as the lunch­room.

I pre­sume that sort of stuff occurs pri­mar­i­ly over social media these days.

Good on the Blank on Blank staff for pick­ing up on the tenor of this inter­view and titling it “Janis Joplin on Rejec­tion.”

You can binge watch a playlist of 82 Blank on Blank episodes, fea­tur­ing many thoughts few express so open­ly any­more, here or right below.

When you’re done with that, you’ll find even more Blank on Blank entries on the cre­ators’ web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock Med­i­tates on Sus­pense & Dark Humor in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

Joni Mitchell Talks About Life as a Reluc­tant Star in a New Ani­mat­ed Inter­view

The Out­siders: Lou Reed, Hunter S. Thomp­son, and Frank Zap­pa Reveal Them­selves in Cap­ti­vat­ing­ly Ani­mat­ed Inter­views

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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