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.

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.

Just as no list of the most 1990s-defin­ing film­mak­ers could do with­out Quentin Taran­ti­no, no list of the most 1990s-defin­ing tele­vi­sion shows could do with­out ER. The long-run­ning, award-laden med­ical dra­ma made more than a few dar­ing moves over its fif­teen years, not least its choic­es of guest direc­tors. Ear­ly in its very first sea­son (which pre­miered a month before the release of Pulp Fic­tion), ER snagged Taran­ti­no to direct the episode “Moth­er­hood,” which aired on May 11, 1995 — three days before Moth­er’s Day. “The rat­ings for ER, which are usu­al­ly through the roof, should be through the moon tonight,” wrote the Bal­ti­more Sun’s David Zurawik, “And there is enough Taran­ti­no to war­rant a bit of a buzz. One weird scene involv­ing a fight between female gang mem­bers as they are being wheeled into the emer­gency room might even be con­sid­ered inspired when judged against the usu­al stan­dards of doc­tor dra­ma. But be warned: It’s ultra-bloody.”

That quote comes from a roundup of con­tem­po­rary write-ups of the episode at Chrono­log­i­cal Snob­bery, which gets into impres­sive detail on the sto­ry behind, the plot of, the hype sur­round­ing, and the Taran­tin­ian imagery in “Moth­er­hood,” and it also offers a brief inter­view with for­mer child actor Abra­ham Ver­duz­co, who “played Palmer, one of the eight Ranger Scouts with diar­rhea.” Taran­ti­no fans of the type who would fre­quent the Quentin Taran­ti­no Archive will have rec­og­nized Ver­duz­co from his ear­li­er appear­ance in Robert Rodriguez’s Taran­ti­no-fea­tur­ing Des­per­a­do. “The episode boasts the usu­al inter­twined sto­ries of bleed­ing gang­sters, rela­tion­ship trou­ble, fam­i­ly dra­ma, preg­nan­cies, drug abuse and for­bid­den love,” says the QTA. “What makes this episode so inter­est­ing to Taran­ti­no fans are all the QT trade­marks that one can spot through the episode.” Some of these, aside from a pen­chant for vin­tage shades (“Quentin picked out the sun­glass­es and was adamant we wear them,” said actress Julian­na Mar­guiles), include:

• Dr. Lewis wears a Yosemite Sam t‑shirt
• Pulp Fic­tion’s Angela Jones appears as Michelle
• A Bea­t­les song (“Black­bird”) accom­pa­nies a birth
• The Ranger Scouts act like the Three Stooges, and Dr. Carter calls the con­stel­la­tion of the stars by the names Moe, Lar­ry, and Curly
• A girl cuts anoth­er girl’s ear off

And a more than bit of cin­e­mat­ic vir­tu­os­i­ty comes right up front in the form of the episode’s much-dis­cussed (as recent­ly as last week, on Metafil­ter) sin­gle-take open­ing. You can see a cou­ple seg­ments of the episode right here, and for the whole thing — not to men­tion video qual­i­ty supe­ri­or to that which you get above, and for which we apol­o­gize — you need only to find disc four of the ER sea­son one DVD col­lec­tion. It makes me wish 1990s tele­vi­sion had done as much to bring auteurs into the fold at 21st-cen­tu­ry tele­vi­sion has; what I would­n’t give for a Hal Hart­ley-direct­ed episode of Sein­feld, say, or a Kevin Smith X‑Files.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Taran­ti­no Tells You About The Actors & Direc­tors Who Pro­vid­ed the Inspi­ra­tion for “Reser­voir Dogs”

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

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.