Blade Runner Spoofed in Three Japanese Commercials (and Generally Loved in Japan)

in Animation, Sci Fi, Television, Video Games | December 12th, 2014

Blade Run­ner’s vision of a thor­ough­ly Japan­i­fied Los Ange­les in the year 2019 reflects the west­ern eco­nom­ic anx­i­eties of the ear­ly 1980s. And while that once far-flung year may not have come quite yet, Japan — giv­en the burst­ing of its post­war finan­cial bub­ble and the “lost decade” of the 1990s that fol­lowed — looks unlike­ly to own a frac­tion as much of the Unit­ed States as Rid­ley Scot­t’s Philip K. Dick adap­ta­tion (and many oth­er futur­is­tic sto­ries besides) assumed it even­tu­al­ly would. Still, the film’s cul­tur­al proph­esy came true: even dur­ing its eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion, Japan exer­cised more “soft pow­er” than ever before, turn­ing the world to the unique claims of its cul­ture, from the refine­ment of its cui­sine to the hyper­ac­tive exu­ber­ance of its music and ani­ma­tion to the match­less ele­gance of its tra­di­tion­al aes­thet­ics.

Even as Blade Run­ner showed us how much Japan­ese style would one day influ­ence, the style of the film had, for its part, an imme­di­ate influ­ence on Japan. Though famous­ly unap­pre­ci­at­ed by west­ern­ers on its ini­tial release (“a waste of time,” said Siskel and Ebert), its pro­to-cyber­punk sen­si­bil­i­ty won the hearts of Japan­ese view­ers, and Japan­ese cre­ators, right away. The video at the top of the post col­lects three Japan­ese tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials that both spoof and pay homage to Blade Run­ner: the first for the Hon­da Beat, a Japan-only road­ster; the sec­ond (an astute par­o­dy of a par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable scene) for Meni­con con­tact lens­es; and the third for mobile ser­vice provider J‑Phone.

But the movie’s effect on Japan did­n’t stop at the adver­tis­ing indus­try. The 1987 ani­mat­ed series Bub­blegum Cri­sis, which fol­lows the adven­tures of a cyborg-bat­tling team in the “Mega Tokyo” of 2032, plays so much like a home­grown Blade Run­ner that a fan could cre­ate the sec­ond video above: an ani­mat­ed recre­ation of Blade Run­ner’s trail­er, using all its orig­i­nal sound, with Bub­blegum Cri­sis’ footage. The 1988 video game Snatch­er stars the decid­ed­ly Har­ri­son-For­dian Gillian Seed, a detec­tive in pur­suit of the tit­u­lar killer androids in the “Neo Kobe” of 2044. You can still see much of what the film inspired, and what inspired in the film, in major Japan­ese cities today. Even Los Ange­les has made strides here and there toward the Blade Run­ner future, though I regret to admit that we still await our tow­er-side geisha.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Muhammad Ali Gives a Dramatic Reading of His Poem on the Attica Prison Uprising

in History, Life, Poetry, Sports, Television | December 10th, 2014

In July of 1972, box­er Muham­mad Ali trav­eled to Dublin to fight Alvin ‘Blue’ Lewis, an ex-con from Detroit. In the days lead­ing up to the bout, he amused him­self by bust­ing on Fight of the Cen­tu­ry vic­tor Smokin’ Joe Fra­zier from afar, refer­ring to him on live tele­vi­sion as a “tramp” and a “slave” who lived on a “chick­en plan­ta­tion.”

It was a career defin­ing encounter for inter­view­er Cathal O’Shan­non, who praised Ali’s deft­ness in that area and not­ed that the champ said things “he would not have been able to say in Amer­i­ca.”

It’s doubt­ful that O’Shannon was refer­ring to the name call­ing, part of Ali’s cam­paign to draw Fra­zier back into the ring. (The champ got his wish less than two years lat­er, when he defeat­ed Fra­zier at Madi­son Square Gar­den in the sec­ond of their three fights.)

What’s more like­ly is that O’Shannon was allud­ing to the orig­i­nal poem Ali recites from mem­o­ry, one minute into clip above, after ori­ent­ing Irish view­ers to the pre­vi­ous fall’s Atti­ca Prison upris­ing, still the dead­liest in U.S. his­to­ry.

Ali imag­ines him­self in the shoes of a black pris­on­er, respond­ing to the white war­den issu­ing a final ulti­ma­tum. His reply, which could be tak­en as a call to arms , but which Ali touch­ing­ly calls a “poet­ic poem,” takes the form of a dozen ter­cets:

Bet­ter far from all I see

To die fight­ing to be free

What more fit­ting end could be?

Bet­ter sure­ly than in some bed

Where in bro­ken health I’m led

Lin­ger­ing until I’m dead

Bet­ter than with prayers and pleas

Or in the clutch of some dis­ease

Wast­ing slow­ly  by degrees

Bet­ter than of heart attack 

Or some dose of drug I lack 

Let me die by being Black 

Bet­ter far that I should go 

Stand­ing here against the foe 

Is the sweet­er death to know 

Bet­ter than the bloody stain 

On some high­way where I’m lain 

Torn by fly­ing glass and pane 

Bet­ter call­ing death to come

Than to die anoth­er dumb

Mut­ed vic­tim in the slum

Bet­ter than of this prison rot

If there’s any choice I’ve got

Kill me here on the spot

Bet­ter far my fight to wage

Now while my blood boils with rage

Lest it cool with ancient age

Bet­ter vow­ing for us to die

Than to Uncle Tom and try

Mak­ing peace just to live a lie

Bet­ter now that I say my sooth

I’m gonna die demand­ing truth

While I’m still akin to youth

Bet­ter now than lat­er on

Now that fear of death is gone

Nev­er mind anoth­er dawn.

The poem draws to a close with an inex­pert but heart­felt sound effect.

The poet — whose mater­nal great-grand­fa­ther was born in Coun­ty Clare — went on to knock out his oppo­nent in the 11th round.

The trail­er for the doc­u­men­tary, When Ali Came to Ire­land, fea­tur­ing Cathal O’Shan­non, is below.

More poet­ry read­ings can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Muham­mad Ali Plans to Fight on Mars in Lost 1966 Inter­view

Mal­colm X, Debat­ing at Oxford, Quotes Shakespeare’s Ham­let (1964)

Mail­er on the Ali-Fore­man Clas­sic

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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What We Heard on the Night John Lennon Was Shot: Radio & TV Broadcasts (December 8, 1980)

in Music, Radio, Television | December 8th, 2014

On Decem­ber 8, 1980, the New Eng­land Patri­ots-Mia­mi Dol­phins game was wind­ing down, the end of anoth­er Mon­day Night Foot­ball game. Then, Howard Cosell, America’s leg­endary sports­cast­er, broke the news to unsus­pect­ing view­ers: “An unspeak­able tragedy con­firmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, out­side of his apart­ment build­ing on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, per­haps, of all of The Bea­t­les, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roo­sevelt Hos­pi­tal, dead on arrival.” Soon enough, more for­mal news reports fol­lowed on the BBC and ABC’s Night­line, and you can still hear what New York­ers heard on the radio that night (below). The sound file was orig­i­nal­ly post­ed by WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, and like Howard says, it puts a lot of things in per­spec­tive for us.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Lennon’s Raw, Soul-Bar­ing Vocals From the Bea­t­les’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (1969)

Hear John Lennon Sing Home Demo Ver­sions of “She Said, She Said,” “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” and “Don’t Let Me Down”

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

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George Plimpton, Paris Review Founder, Pitches 1980s Video Games for the Mattel Intellivision

in Television, Video Games | December 7th, 2014

plimpton mattel

Space, choose Atari; sports, choose Intel­livi­sion. So went the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom of ear­ly-1980s home video gam­ing, where the Atari 2600 enjoyed an insur­mount­able advan­tage when it came to blast­ing alien invaders, but where the Mat­tel Intel­livi­sion — putting aside the sheer dis­com­fort of those wonky con­trollers — could sat­is­fy the elec­tron­ic sports­man like no oth­er con­sole.

For Mat­tel, win­ning over the jocks and the nerds at once would require a del­i­cate mar­ket­ing bal­ance, one attempt­ed by the hir­ing of George Plimp­ton, the man who per­son­al­ly pitched against the Nation­al League, sparred with Sug­ar Ray Robin­son, trained with the Detroit Lions, tend­ed goal amid the Boston Bru­ins, hit the PGA Tour in the hey­day of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nick­laus, and helped found the Paris Review. (The name did stand for “intel­li­gent tele­vi­sion,” after all.)

“Who bet­ter to vouch for the real­ism of a sports video game than some­one who had actu­al­ly suit­ed up and played for real?” asks Intellivisionlives.com. “His per­sona became the per­sona of Intel­livi­sion: a mix of smug supe­ri­or­i­ty with a healthy touch of self-dep­re­ca­tion.” He starred, as “Mr. Intel­livi­sion,” in quite a few mem­o­rable tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials such as the one at the top of the post, where we see him sit down at his trusty type­writer to announce the small­er, cheap­er Intel­livi­sion II; the one just above, where he pre­sides over a direct com­par­i­son with Atari to reveal the Intel­livi­sion’s sport­ing advan­tage (Mat­tel had pro­vid­ed him both con­soles to play so he could hon­est­ly sign an affi­davit con­firm­ing his pref­er­ence); and spots like the one below, where he even trum­pets the supe­ri­or­i­ty of Intel­livi­sion space shoot­ers. Plimp­ton’s influ­ence on clas­sic gam­ing sur­vives him, most recent­ly in the online “retro” game George Plimp­ton’s Video Fal­con­ry. Some­one even cut togeth­er a fake 80s com­mer­cial for it, though they inex­plic­a­bly made it a game for the Cole­co­V­i­sion. Come on — nobody bought a Cole­co­V­i­sion for the sports games.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Run Vin­tage Video Games (From Pac-Man to E.T.) and Soft­ware in Your Web Brows­er, Thanks to Archive.org

The Great Gats­by and Wait­ing for Godot: The Video Game Edi­tions

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton’s Philosophical Look at Our Wanderlust Tendencies (2005)

in Philosophy, Television, Travel | December 5th, 2014

The tra­di­tion of the uncom­fort­able intel­lec­tu­al aboard a cruise ship, while not a par­tic­u­lar­ly long or wide one, has pro­duced a few intrigu­ing works. You may well know — and, if you’re any­thing like me, know very well indeed from count­less reread­ings — David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s essay about his sev­en-night Caribbean cruise, known as it first ran in Harper’s as “Ship­ping Out,” and lat­er in full form as the title piece of the col­lec­tion A Sup­pos­ed­ly Fun Thing I’ll Nev­er Do Again. In this envi­ron­ment of con­stant­ly replen­ished ameni­ties and unceas­ing “pam­per­ing” (a word that gen­er­ates an essay’s worth of exe­ge­sis by itself), Wal­lace comes up against the inevitable ques­tion: can a cruise line, or any oth­er form of human effort, real­ly guar­an­tee our hap­pi­ness?

This ques­tion has also proven cen­tral to the career of anoth­er writer and thinker, Alain de Bot­ton. No mat­ter the sub­ject on which his focus may come to rest — archi­tec­ture, Proust, ancient phi­los­o­phy, work — his mind nev­er strays far from the issue of what makes us hap­py, and whether any­thing can keep us that way. The 2005 doc­u­men­tary The Art of Trav­el, a com­pan­ion to his book of the same name, finds de Bot­ton aboard a cruise lin­er, ful­ly equipped with fine wines and line-danc­ing class­es, bound for Spain. Will he dis­em­bark in the Barcelona of which he has dreamed, or will an obscure French nov­el­ist con­vince him of the fool­ish­ness of actu­al­ly expe­ri­enc­ing the very places you’ve long want­ed to? (The answer may not come as a sur­prise to those famil­iar with de Bot­ton’s pro­fes­sion­al tem­pera­ment.)

But our intre­pid host does­n’t stop at cruis­ing: he takes a week­end “city break” in Ams­ter­dam, fol­lows around a World War II bunker enthu­si­ast, goes for a road trip through east Ger­many, pon­ders the dis­tinc­tive lone­li­ness found only in Edward Hop­per paint­ings; gets the grand tour of a “swingers’ hotel,” boards an all-Japan­ese Cotswolds tour bus (and teach­es his fel­low pas­sen­gers about John Ruskin); and won­ders, final­ly, whether the def­i­n­i­tion of a trav­el­er comes not from the dis­tance and fre­quen­cy of the move­ment, but from the “atti­tude of curios­i­ty and recep­tiv­i­ty” to what­ev­er cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion. Hav­ing found myself in a career that involves more and more trav­el each year, I can’t ask myself these ques­tions too often. Whether you care about get­ting to far-off places or rich­ly expe­ri­enc­ing the ones near­by, per­haps de Bot­ton will get you ask­ing them too. At the very least, he’ll save you a cruise.

More films by de Bot­ton can be found in our col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Art Can Answer Life’s Big Ques­tions in Art as Ther­a­py

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Six Great Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

Socrates on TV, Cour­tesy of Alain de Bot­ton (2000)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Dragnet’s 1967 LSD Episode: #85 on TV Guide’s List of the Greatest Episodes of All Time

in Television | November 26th, 2014

Jack Webb’s sem­i­nal cop show Drag­net, which first ran on tele­vi­sion through most of the ’50s, was known for its grit­ty real­ism. In every episode, the show’s robot­ic, lacon­ic lead, Detec­tive Joe Fri­day, would nav­i­gate the seedy under­world and even­tu­al­ly get his man.

Though Drag­net rivaled only I Love Lucy in pop­u­lar­i­ty, Webb pulled the plug on the series in 1959. But he could­n’t stay away.  In Jan­u­ary 1967, Webb launched a reboot of Drag­net. This time, Fri­day, quite pos­si­bly the squarest per­son on the plan­et, takes on youth cul­ture. Case in point, the series’ inau­gur­al show, which you can watch above, where Fri­day and his new part­ner Bill Gan­non stum­ble upon that strange new soci­etal scourge LSD. Inci­den­tal­ly, this is also the first episode of Drag­net to be shot in col­or. Make of that what you will.

When Fri­day and Gan­non inves­ti­gate a com­plaint about some­one eat­ing bark, they dis­cov­er a teenag­er who paint­ed his face Brave­heart-style and is bab­bling about the pilot light at the cen­ter of the Earth. This is Blue­boy AKA Ben­jamin Carv­er and clear­ly, he is trip­ping. He’s also sell­ing lousy acid to Mar­cia Brady look-alikes.

The show is a fas­ci­nat­ing time cap­sule on a num­ber of lev­els. First, this episode was made while LSD was still legal. (Acid was banned Cal­i­for­nia in Octo­ber 1966. Not long, one imag­ines, after the episode was shot.) Fri­day and Gan­non shake their heads in frus­tra­tion over their legal impo­tence, espe­cial­ly lat­er when they dis­cov­er Blue­boy dead from an over­dose. Just in case you didn’t get the show’s moral (drugs = bad) Webb lards the episode with ter­ri­fy­ing facts about the drug. “LSD is so potent that a sin­gle pound of the prepa­ra­tion can turn every per­son in Los Ange­les coun­ty into a total psy­chot­ic. The pop­u­la­tion of the coun­ty – sev­en mil­lion peo­ple.”

Media crit­ic Michele Hilmes argues, how­ev­er, that the show might just be speak­ing out of both sides of its mouth. To an old­er gen­er­a­tion, Drag­net is a cop show preach­ing law and order. To the younger gen­er­a­tion, Webb’s heavy-hand­ed­ness cross­es the line into par­o­d­ic camp.

Jack Webb so embod­ied the role of Joe Fri­day that he all but became the LAPD in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion. When Webb died in 1982, he was buried with full police hon­ors and his badge num­ber, 714, was offi­cial­ly retired from the force. It’s curi­ous that a cop so unre­lent­ing­ly smug would become the paragon of LA’s finest.

Thom Ander­sen mem­o­rably summed up the series in his sem­i­nal essay film Los Ange­les Plays Itself. “Drag­net admirably expressed the con­tempt the LAPD had for the law-abid­ing civil­ians it was pledged ‘to pro­tect and to serve.’ It pro­tect­ed us from our­selves, and it served us despite our best efforts to make the job more dif­fi­cult. … Friday’s heavy-hand­ed irony nev­er lets up. None of the wit­ness­es or sus­pects he ques­tions pen­e­trates his wall of con­de­scen­sion. Of course, Drag­net isn’t a doc­u­men­tary por­trait of the LAPD, and its detec­tives weren’t real­ly like Joe Fri­day. What’s scary is that he rep­re­sent­ed the department’s ide­al.”

Accord­ing to Andrew Gra­ham’s Drag­net blog, TV Guide vot­ed this episode #85 on its list of the great­est TV episodes of all time.

via Neatora­ma

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Watch The Bicy­cle Trip: An Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Tim Burton Directs Ray Bradbury’s “The Jar” on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1986)

in Film, Television | November 25th, 2014

How do you fol­low up on mak­ing a children’s movie clas­sic? If you’re Tim Bur­ton, you spin a tale of sex, mur­der and con­cep­tu­al art.

On the heels of his fea­ture debut Pee-Wee’s Big Adven­ture, Tim Bur­ton adapt­ed Ray Bradbury’s “The Jar” (1944) for an episode of the ‘80s reboot of Alfred Hitch­cock Presents. In Bradbury’s sto­ry, a fail­ing farmer buys a jar with a curi­ous thing float­ing in it. It is described as “one of those pale things drift­ing in alco­hol plas­ma … with its peeled, dead eyes star­ing out at you and nev­er see­ing you.” This thing, how­ev­er, has a pecu­liar charis­ma. Peo­ple come for miles to gawk at it, strange­ly cap­ti­vat­ed by its uncan­ny charm. Well, almost every­one. The farmer’s cheat­ing wife, how­ev­er, loathes it to the pit of her mar­row and when she tries to get rid of it, things take a vio­lent turn.

Bur­ton gives the sto­ry a decid­ed­ly Rea­gan-era twist. Instead of being a down-and-out farmer, Knoll (played by Grif­fin Dunne) is a fad­ing star of the New York art scene. The episode opens with a crit­ic sav­aging Knoll’s new open­ing, which is filled with large, pre­pos­ter­ous con­cep­tu­al pieces. The artist flees the show and his belit­tling harpy of a wife in favor of the local junk­yard. There, he pries the tit­u­lar jar from the trunk of a 1938 Mer­cedes. Float­ing inside is what looks like a Dr. Seuss crea­ture drown in Windex. Knoll is both fas­ci­nat­ed and repulsed by it. So, nat­u­ral­ly, he places it at the cen­ter of his show. The results are mixed. Sure, Knoll starts to sell art again but his wife also starts to get stab­by with a kitchen knife.

The episode is deli­cious fun. From the eye-pop­ping col­or palette to the crisp, graph­ic direc­tion to the painful­ly ‘80s hair­styles, this work feels very much a part of the same world as Burton’s next movie, Beetle­juice. In fact, com­pos­er Dan­ny Elf­man and screen­writ­ers Michael McDow­ell and Lar­ry Wil­son worked on both. You can watch it above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films

Vin­cent, Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Watch “The Fountain of Youth,” Orson Welles’ 1958 Pilot That Almost Reinvented TV

in Film, Television | November 12th, 2014

Amer­i­cans say that they love cre­ativ­i­ty but in fact they don’t. As Jes­si­ca Olien notes in Slate, think­ing out­side the box tends to freak peo­ple out. Stud­ies show that teach­ers favor dull but duti­ful stu­dents over cre­ative ones. In the cor­po­rate world, sug­ges­tions made by cre­ative work­ers rou­tine­ly get ignored by their supe­ri­ors. As art crit­ic Dave Hick­ey suc­cinct­ly notes, “Every­body hates it when something’s real­ly great.”

This is prob­a­bly as good a way as any to under­stand Orson Welles’s stunt­ed career. Here was a man of such genius that he rad­i­cal­ly trans­formed just about every cre­ative medi­um he touched. His 1937 pro­duc­tion of Julius Cae­sar, set in con­tem­po­rary Fas­cist Italy, was the toast of Broad­way. His noto­ri­ous radio adap­ta­tion of War of the Worlds was so effec­tive in cre­at­ing a sense of unfold­ing calami­ty that it caused an actu­al pub­lic pan­ic. And his mas­ter­piece Cit­i­zen Kane was so orig­i­nal that it per­plexed audi­ences when it came out. Now, of course, Kane is wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the best movies ever made. In spite of Welles’s ter­rif­ic nat­ur­al tal­ents – he made Kane at age 25 – he con­sis­tent­ly found him­self shut down by the pow­ers that be. The stu­dio butchered Welles’s fol­low up movie The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons, and he strug­gled with stu­dios and financiers for artis­tic con­trol of just about every movie since.

In the 1950s, Welles tried to trans­form anoth­er medi­um – tele­vi­sion. As Dan­ger­ous Minds recent­ly unearthed, Welles made a pilot for The Orson Welles Show in 1956, an anthol­o­gy series backed by Lucille Ball’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Desilu. The series was nev­er picked up osten­si­bly because it was (and still is) noth­ing like what you’ve ever seen on TV. Welles incor­po­rat­ed noirish light­ing, rear pro­jec­tion, pho­to stills, in-cam­era set changes and a host of oth­er tech­niques bor­rowed from radio and the stage. Though the net­work dashed all hope of a series, NBC ulti­mate­ly did air the pilot episode — “The Foun­tain of Youth” — on its Col­gate The­ater in 1958.

The sto­ry itself is a deli­cious­ly iron­ic fable adapt­ed from a short sto­ry by John Col­lier. Dressed in a tuxe­do and with a per­pet­u­al wry smirk on his face, Welles nar­rates. (Welles also wrote, direct­ed, set designed the show along with arrang­ing its music.) The less said about the sto­ry, the bet­ter, but it involves a self-obsessed actress, an equal­ly nar­cis­sis­tic ten­nis star and an embit­tered sci­en­tist who claims to have dis­cov­ered the secret to eter­nal youth. Watch it above and think about the fas­ci­nat­ing road TV could have trav­eled.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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