Conspiracy Theory Rock: The Schoolhouse Rock Parody Saturday Night Live May Have Censored

in Animation, Comedy, Media, Politics, Television | September 2nd, 2014

You’ve prob­a­bly seen “Illu­sion of Choice,” a 2011 info­graph­ic detail­ing how six media con­glom­er­ates “con­trol a stag­ger­ing 90% of what we read, watch, or lis­ten to.” (The enti­ties named are GE, News Corp, Dis­ney, Via­com, Time Warn­er, and CBS.) Anoth­er “Illu­sion of Choice” info­graph­ic from last year doc­u­ments how “ten huge cor­po­ra­tions con­trol the pro­duc­tion of almost every­thing the aver­age per­son buys.” Are these webs of cor­po­rate con­nec­tion kooky con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries or gen­uine cause for alarm? Do the cor­re­la­tions between busi­ness enti­ties cause polit­i­cal cur­rents that under­mine democ­ra­cy and media inde­pen­dence? It’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tro­ver­sial to think so giv­en the amount of mon­ey cor­po­ra­tions spend on lob­by­ing and polit­i­cal cam­paigns. It’s not even par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tro­ver­sial to say so, at least for those of us who aren’t employed by, say, Via­com, Time Warn­er, GE, etc.

But point­ing fin­gers at the cor­po­ra­toc­ra­cy may have not gone over so well for famed com­e­dy writer Robert Smigel in 1998 when his recur­ring ani­mat­ed “Sat­ur­day TV Fun­house” seg­ment pro­duced the “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock” bit above for Sat­ur­day Night Live. A par­o­dy of the beloved School­house Rock edu­ca­tion­al ‘toons of the 70s, “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock” fea­tures a disheveled gentleman—a stereo­type of the out­sider crackpot—leading a sing-along about the machi­na­tions of the “Media-opoly.” Fig­ured as greedy octopi (rem­i­nis­cent of Matt Taibbi’s “vam­pire squid”), the media giants here, includ­ing GE, West­ing­house, Fox, and Dis­ney, devour the small­er guys—the tra­di­tion­al networks—and “use them to say what­ev­er they please and put down the opin­ions of any­one who dis­agrees.” The seg­ment may have raised the ire of GE, who own NBC. It aired once with the orig­i­nal episode but was sub­se­quent­ly pulled from the show in syn­di­ca­tion, though it’s been includ­ed in sub­se­quent DVD com­pi­la­tions of “Sat­ur­day TV Fun­house.”

Now “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock” is cir­cu­lat­ing online—ampli­fied by a Marc Maron tweet—as a “banned” clip, a mis­lead­ing descrip­tion that feeds right into the sto­ry of con­spir­a­cy. Edit­ing a sketch from a syn­di­cat­ed com­e­dy show, after all, is not tan­ta­mount to ban­ning it. While the short piece makes the usu­al com­pelling case against cor­po­rate rule, it does so in a tongue-in-cheek way that allows for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some of these alle­ga­tions are ten­u­ous exag­ger­a­tions. Our unwashed pre­sen­ter, for exam­ple, ends the seg­ment mum­bling an inco­her­ent non sequitur about Lorne Michaels and Mar­i­on Bar­ry attend­ing the same high school. For his part, Michaels has said the seg­ment was cut because it “wasn’t fun­ny.” He’s got a point—it isn’t—but it’s hard to believe it didn’t raise oth­er objec­tions from net­work exec­u­tives. It wouldn’t be the first time the show has been accused of cen­sor­ing a polit­i­cal sketch.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

5 Musi­cal Guests Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live: From Elvis Costel­lo to Frank Zap­pa

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981: A Quick 100th Birth­day Cel­e­bra­tion

School­house Rock at 40: Revis­it a Col­lec­tion of Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Edu­ca­tion­al Videos

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

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

in Film, Television | August 25th, 2014

It hap­pened before, and it still hap­pens now and again today, but in the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, auteurs real­ly got into mak­ing com­mer­cials: Ing­mar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, David Lynch. Not, per­haps, the first names in film­mak­ing you’d asso­ciate with com­mer­cial­i­ty, but there we have it. Where, though, to place Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, direc­tor of La Dolce Vita, Satyri­con, and Amar­cord, movies that, while hard­ly assem­bled by the num­bers, could nev­er resist the enter­tain­ing and even plea­sur­able (or the some­how plea­sur­ably dis­plea­sur­able) spec­ta­cle? On one hand, Felli­ni went so far as to cam­paign against com­mer­cials air­ing dur­ing the broad­cast of motion pic­tures; on the oth­er hand, he made a few of the things, and not minor ones, either. In a post here on Fellini’s own com­mer­cials, Mike Springer ref­er­enced a trio shot for the Bank of Rome, quot­ing on the sub­ject Felli­ni biog­ra­ph­er Peter Bon­danel­la, who notes their inspi­ra­tion by “var­i­ous dreams Felli­ni had sketched out in his dream note­books,” and oth­er Felli­ni biog­ra­ph­er Tul­lio Kezich, who describes them as “the gold­en autumn of a patri­arch of cin­e­ma who, for a moment, holds again the reins of cre­ation.” Today, we present all three.


“Mon­ey is every­where but so is poet­ry,” Felli­ni him­self once said. “What we lack are the poets.” In these three spots, the cre­ator syn­ony­mous with Ital­ian auteur­hood brings poet­ry and mon­ey togeth­er — even more so than most com­mer­cial-mak­ing “cre­ative” film­mak­ers, giv­en the overt­ly finan­cial nature of the clien­t’s busi­ness. You can read more about the project, “the last thing he did behind a cam­era,” at Sight & Sound: “In 1992, the year before his death, [Felli­ni] realised his best cor­po­rate work. [ … ] Here Felli­ni com­pre­hend­ed, skil­ful­ly con­veyed and exposed the ulti­mate essence of adver­tis­ing: the cre­ation of needs and fears that the giv­en prod­uct will mag­i­cal­ly solve.” The set­up involves Pao­lo Vil­lag­gio as a night­mare-plagued man and Fer­nan­do Rey as his atten­tive­ly lis­ten­ing ana­lyst — and in addi­tion to his pro­fes­sion­al inter­ests, evi­dent­ly quite a Bank of Rome enthu­si­ast. The spot at the top of the post includes Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, but as with Fellini’s fea­tures, even non-Italo­phones can expect rich, long-form (by com­mer­cial stan­dards) audio­vi­su­al expe­ri­ences watch­ing the oth­er two as well (above) — and ones, unlike any expe­ri­ence you’d have actu­al­ly step­ping into a bank, not quite of this real­i­ty. Today, we present all three, the last films Felli­ni ever made.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

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

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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Don Pardo (1918–2014), Voice of Saturday Night Live, Suggests Using Short Words

in Comedy, Life, Television | August 19th, 2014

Don Par­do voiced the intro­duc­tions of Sat­ur­day Night Live for 38 sea­sons. He began call­ing out the names of the S.N.L. cast mem­bers dur­ing the first episode in Octo­ber, 1975, and (except for the 1981–82 sea­son) he kept call­ing out those names straight through last May. Chevy Chase, Gil­da Rad­ner, John Belushi, Bill Mur­ray, Eddie Mur­phy, Tina Fey — he called them all. Thanks to an imper­son­ator, you can hear a com­pi­la­tion of Par­do’s call for every cast mem­ber.

Don Par­do died yes­ter­day at 96 years of age. Ear­li­er in his career, he was the announc­er for a num­ber of Amer­i­can TV shows, includ­ing The Price Is Right, Jack­pot, and Jeop­ardy!. But his voice became part of the fab­ric of Amer­i­ca’s great­est com­e­dy show, Sat­ur­day Night Live. And he con­tin­ued voic­ing the intro long after his for­mal retire­ment from NBC in 2004. Not lack­ing ener­gy (watch him blow out his can­dles on his 90th birth­day), Par­do flew from Tuc­son to New York week­ly to get S.N.L. start­ed. Above, we have a short video that fea­tures Par­do, then 88, show­ing off, his sheer lin­guis­tic awe­some­ness.

Some­how, I’m now hop­ing that when­ev­er my day comes, Don Par­do’s voice will intro­duce me on the oth­er side.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

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Charles & Ray Eames’ Iconic Lounge Chair Debuts on American TV (1956)

in Design, Television | August 18th, 2014

Liv­ing in Los Ange­les, I sup­pose I could go up and have a look (albeit a dis­tant one) at Charles and Ray Eames’ Eames House any time I like. But I’ve nev­er got around to vis­it­ing that most notable of all works of mid­cen­tu­ry mod­ern Cal­i­for­nia archi­tec­ture, since I have anoth­er exam­ple of their era- (and coast-) defin­ing design much clos­er at hand. When­ev­er I look to my left, I see an Eames’ Lounge Chair — not my Eames Lounge Chair, per se, but the one my girl­friend brought with her when we moved in togeth­er. Much more than the sum of its mold­ed ply­wood and leather parts, the Eames Chair made even more of a mark on the design sen­si­bil­i­ty of the 20th cen­tu­ry than did the Eames House. Could the Eam­ses them­selves have known, when they first rolled it out in 1956, that the chair would remain unsur­passed in its fur­ni­ture niche more than 55 years lat­er? Watch them debut­ing the Eames Chair on TV, to Home Show host Arlene Fran­cis, and see if you can read it between the lines.

We first see the Eames Chair only in sil­hou­ette — but already we rec­og­nize it. “Well, that is quite a depar­ture, Charles, and it looks won­der­ful­ly com­fort­able,” says host to design­er. He takes the ques­tion quite lit­er­al­ly: “It’s rose­wood, ply­wood, and it’s black leather, and its insides are all feath­ers and down. I think it’d be a bet­ter idea if we would just build it for you right here.” We then see a short film, pro­duced in a com­bi­na­tion of live action and stop motion, show­ing the com­plete assem­bly and sub­se­quent dis­as­sem­bly of an Eames Chair. It also includes the pack­ing of its parts into a box with the logo of Her­man Miller, the com­pa­ny for whom the Eames orig­i­nal­ly designed it, and one that, so Charles says, allowed them seem­ing­ly com­plete aes­thet­ic inde­pen­dence, depen­dent on no spe­cif­ic mar­ket or sea­son. Hence the range of time­less Eames-designed chairs dis­played on the seg­ment that reveal the design evo­lu­tion lead­ing up to the Eames Chair itself, the most time­less of them all. “You real­ly cre­ate your own mar­ket, don’t you?” Fran­cis asks. Charles remains mod­est (and Ray has already exit­ed stage left), but on some lev­el must have under­stood that every impor­tant design­er does just that.

More than a half cen­tu­ry lat­er, you can still buy your own Eames Chair and Ottoman at Her­man Miller.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Design­ers Charles & Ray Eames Cre­ate a Pro­mo­tion­al Film for the Ground­break­ing Polaroid SX-70 Instant Cam­era (1972)

Charles & Ray Eames’ Icon­ic Film Pow­ers of Ten (1977) and the Less­er-Known Pro­to­type from 1968

Ice Cube & Charles Eames Rev­el in L.A. Archi­tec­ture

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 First Episode of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, Of Which Stanley Kubrick Became a Big Fan

in Animation, Film, Television | August 14th, 2014

Osamu Tezu­ka is one of the great cre­ative forces of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Known in his native Japan as the “god of man­ga,” Tezu­ka was mind-bog­gling­ly pro­duc­tive, crank­ing out around 170,000 pages of comics in his 60 years of life. He almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly made man­ga respectable to read for adults, cre­at­ing tales that were both uni­ver­sal and emo­tion­al­ly com­plex. And he worked in pret­ty much every genre you can imag­ine from hor­ror, to girly fan­ta­sy, to an epic series about the life of the Bud­dha. Yet of all of Tezuka’s many vol­umes of comics, his best beloved work was Tet­suwan Ato­mu, oth­er­wise known as Astro Boy.

In 1962, Tezu­ka ful­filled a child­hood dream by open­ing an ani­ma­tion stu­dio. One of his first projects was to adapt was Astro Boy. The tele­vi­sion series pre­miered in 1963 and proved to be huge­ly pop­u­lar in Japan. It wasn’t long before Amer­i­can TV start­ed air­ing dubbed ver­sions of the show. You can see the very first episode, “Birth of Astro Boy,” above.

After his son dies in a freak car acci­dent, sci­en­tist Dr. Astor Boyn­ton is dri­ven mad by grief. He devel­ops an insane laugh and, with it, an equal­ly insane plan to build a robot who looks just like his dead son. After a Franken­stein-esque mon­tage, Astro Boy is born. All seems well for the adorable, sweet-natured robot, until Boyn­ton freaks out over Astro Boy’s lack of  growth. “I’ve been a good father to you, haven’t I?” he whines. “Well then, why can’t you be a good son to me and grow up to be a nor­mal human adult?” How’s that for a parental guilt trip?

astroboy-birth

So Dr. Boyn­ton casts Astro Boy out, sell­ing him into slav­ery to The Great Cac­cia­tore, an evil cir­cus ring­leader who forces him to be the world’s cutest robot glad­i­a­tor. For­tu­nate­ly, Dr. Ele­fun, a col­league of Dr. Boyn­ton, takes pity on Astro Boy and works to free him from his bondage.

The whole sto­ry plays out as if Mary Shel­ley and Fritz Lang col­lab­o­rat­ed to make Dum­bo. Tezu­ka throws in a lot of wacky slap­stick com­e­dy, which just bare­ly takes the edge off the story’s Dick­en­sian melo­dra­ma, which relent­less­ly mines all those pri­mal fears you thought you got over. In short, it’s bril­liant.

The series ran for two years in the States and then con­tin­ued on re-runs though­out the decade. One of the shows fans was appar­ent­ly Stan­ley Kubrick. Dur­ing the mid-60s, Kubrick sent Tezu­ka a let­ter ask­ing if he would be inter­est­ed in help­ing with the art direc­tion and design of his new movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The offer would have required that Tezu­ka spend a year or more in Lon­don. Though great­ly flat­tered, Tezu­ka turned the offer down. The worka­holic artist sim­ply couldn’t spend that much time away from his stu­dio. One has to won­der what Kubrick’s mas­ter­piece would have looked like seen through the prism of Tezu­ka.

In 2001, Steven Spiel­berg pre­miered a movie that was a long ges­tat­ing project of Kubrick’s – the wild­ly under­rat­ed A.I. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence. The par­al­lels between that movie, about a robot child cast out by his par­ents into a cru­el world, and Astro Boy are strik­ing. Kubrick, as it turns out, might have been even a big­ger fan of the God of Man­ga than pre­vi­ous­ly thought.

Here’s the trail­er for A.I. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence.


Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Japan­ese Car­toons from the 1920s and 30s Reveal the Styl­is­tic Roots of Ani­me

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyza­ki

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 one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

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The 1985 Soviet TV Adaptation of The Hobbit: Cheap and Yet Strangely Charming

in Film, Literature, Television | August 14th, 2014

If you call your­self a Tolkien fan­boy or fan­girl, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly kept up with the var­i­ous film and tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tions of not just the Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy, but of its pre­de­ces­sor, The Hob­bit, or There and Back Again. Tolkien’s first chil­dren’s nov­el (or so the lit­er­ary world first received it). The sto­ry it tells of the reluc­tant hero Bil­bo Bag­gins and the band of raff­ish com­pa­tri­ots who drag him out to claim some trea­sure from Smaug the drag­on offers under­stand­ably irre­sistible mate­r­i­al for adap­ta­tion: the rich­ly detailed, often fun­ny high-fan­ta­sy adven­ture has, over the decades, made for numer­ous pro­duc­tions on the stage, radio, and screen.

They’ve ranged from low- to high-pro­file, from Gene Deitch’s loose-as-pos­si­ble 12-minute “ani­mat­ed” adap­ta­tion that came out in 1966 to Peter Jack­son’s tri­par­tite, high-fram­er­ate, nine-hour series of major motion pic­tures, two cur­rent­ly released with one to go. But what to make of the Sovi­et Hob­bit above?

Known in Eng­lish as The Fairy­tale Jour­ney of Mr. Bil­bo Bag­gins, The Hob­bit and in Russ­ian, in full, as Сказочное путешествие мистера Бильбо Бэггинса, Хоббита, через дикий край, чёрный лес, за туманные горы. Туда и обратно. По сказочной повести Джона Толкина “Хоббит,” the hour­long TV movie debuted on the Leningrad TV Chan­nel’s chil­dren’s show Tale After Tale in 1985. This unli­censed adap­ta­tion frames itself with the words of a Tolkien stand-in called “the Pro­fes­sor,” using live actors to play the main char­ac­ters like Bil­bo, Thorin, Gan­dalf, and Gol­lum, por­tray­ing the more exot­ic ones with either pup­pets or, accord­ing to Tolkien Gate­way, dancers from the Leningrad State Aca­d­e­m­ic Opera and Bal­let The­atre. The fact that this ver­sion of The Hob­bit only recent­ly became avail­able with real Eng­lish sub­ti­tles (as opposed to goofy par­o­dy ones) goes to show just how seri­ous­ly the Tolkien fan­dom has tak­en it, but it does retain a kind of hand­craft­ed charm. Plus, it gives the inter­net the chance to indulge in the oblig­a­tory Yakov Smirnoff gag: in Sovi­et Rus­sia, ring finds you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Hob­bit: The First Ani­ma­tion & Film Adap­ta­tion of Tolkien’s Clas­sic (1966)

C.S. Lewis’ Pre­scient 1937 Review of The Hob­bit by J.R.R. Tolkien: It “May Well Prove a Clas­sic”

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

Illus­tra­tions of The Lord of the Rings in Russ­ian Iconog­ra­phy Style (1993)

Down­load Eight Free Lec­tures on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

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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Dick Van Dyke, Paul Lynde & the Original Cast of Bye Bye Birdie Appear on The Ed Sullivan Show (1961)

in Film, Television, Theatre | August 6th, 2014

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Think back, if you will to the dawn of the 60’s, or fail­ing that, the third sea­son of Mad Men, when Broad­way musi­cals could still be con­sid­ered legit­i­mate adult enter­tain­ment and Bye Bye Birdie was the hottest tick­et in town.

Six months after the show’s 1960 open­ing, Broadway’s—soon to be television’s—latest star  Dick Van Dyke, appeared on the Ed Sul­li­van show to intro­duce the rest of the coun­try to the musi­cal their high schools and com­mu­ni­ty the­aters would be per­form­ing in per­pe­tu­ity.

The show­case also afford­ed the Amer­i­can view­ing pub­lic their first glimpse of the man who would out­last Sul­li­van as a fix­ture in their liv­ing rooms, Hol­ly­wood’s most out­ra­geous Square, Paul Lyn­de.

Lyn­de had his camp and ate it too in the role of a solid­ly Mid­west­ern father of two who, by virtue of his asso­ci­a­tion with his teenage daugh­ter, finds him­self appear­ing on none oth­er than… The Ed Sul­li­van Show! It’s a tru­ly meta moment. The stu­dio audi­ence seems to enjoy the joke, and Sul­li­van appears pleased too, when he wan­ders on after “Hymn for a Sun­day Evening” as the song is prop­er­ly called. Accord­ing to his biog­ra­phy, Always on Sun­day, his response upon first hear­ing was less enthu­si­as­tic. When the mer­ry Broad­way crowd turned to check Sul­li­van’s response to Lyn­de’s gulp­ing final admis­sion, (“I love you, Ed!”),  Sul­li­van report­ed that he want­ed the floor to open up and swal­low both him and his wife.

Way to get with the joke, Ed!

Lat­er in the episode, there’s some grace­ful Van Dyke foot­work on “Put on a Hap­py Face,” a song that even the most sea­soned the­ater­go­ers tend to for­get orig­i­nat­ed with this show, prob­a­bly because it does noth­ing to advance the plot.

Lyn­de and Van Dyke reprised their roles in the 1962 film, but in a typ­i­cal tale of stage-to-screen heart­break, Susan Wat­son, Lyn­de’s orig­i­nal Birdie daugh­ter, was replaced by 22-year-old bomb­shell, Ann-Mar­gret. (The deli­cious­ly bitchy remark Mau­reen Sta­ple­ton made about her at the wrap par­ty turns out to be apoc­ryphal, or at least intend­ed more kind­ly than it would seem.) See what she brings to “Hymn for a Sun­day Evening” below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Dig­i­tal Archive of Vin­tage Tele­vi­sion Com­mer­cials

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

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A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Interview (1964)

in Music, Television | August 5th, 2014

Have you heard of the Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to Long-Haired Men? If not, you can’t say you know all of David Bowie’s groups. Fifty years ago, in his very first tele­vi­sion inter­view, Bowie appeared in the capac­i­ty of its spokesman, as well as that of “Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al League for the Preser­va­tion of Ani­mal Fil­a­ment.” “I think we’re all fair­ly tol­er­ant,” says the 17-year-old then known as David (or even Dav­ey) Jones, “but for the last two years we’ve had com­ments like ‘Dar­ling!’ and ‘Can I car­ry your hand­bag?’ thrown at us, and I think it just has to stop now.” Cliff Michel­more, host of the BBC pro­gram Tonight where this all went down in Novem­ber 1964, asks if such behav­ior sur­pris­es him, because, “after all, you’ve got real­ly rather long hair, haven’t you?” “We have, yes,” replies the pro­to-Bowie Bowie. “I think we all like long hair, and we don’t see why oth­er peo­ple should per­se­cute us because of this.”

The “we” to which he refers com­pris­es all the equal­ly mop-topped young dudes flank­ing him. Togeth­er, they would lat­er appear on anoth­er BBC pro­gram, Gad­zooks! It’s All Hap­pen­ing, as the group — this time musi­cal — the Man­ish Boys, per­form­ing their big num­ber, a cov­er of Bob­by Bland­’s “I Pity the Fool.” But accord­ing to the David Bowie FAQ, pro­duc­er Bar­ry Lang­ford had, for that appear­ance, pre­vi­ous­ly “insist­ed that David cut his 17” long hair,” result­ing in the brief for­ma­tion of the Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to Long-Haired Men and, con­se­quent­ly, “numer­ous news­pa­per reports… of course it was all a scam for some free pub­lic­i­ty.” What­ev­er his style — and he’s had a few — Bowie has clear­ly always known how to work the ever-reengi­neered pub­lic­i­ty machine. Some­times he’s done it by going with the flow, but only par­tial­ly, as we see here, where he and the Man­ish Boys sport rough­ly nine-inch hair rather than cuts to the harsh ear­ly-1960s stan­dard. Bowie, nev­er one of rock­’s ded­i­cat­ed long­hairs, can’t have found this too ter­ri­bly oppres­sive in real­i­ty, although when he returned to the BBC 35 years lat­er for a chat with the more stri­dent Jere­my Pax­man, he did so with a look that might have done the old Soci­ety proud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

David Bowie Talks and Sings on The Dick Cavett Show (1974)

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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