Protect and Survive: 1970s British Instructional Films on How to Live Through a Nuclear Attack

in History, Television | May 30th, 2014

In Walk­ing in Ruins, nov­el­ist and adven­tur­ous pedes­tri­an Geoff Nichol­son’s book about the on-foot explo­ration of Eng­land and Amer­i­ca’s dis­used places, the author devotes a fas­ci­nat­ing sec­tion to an Essex “secret nuclear bunker.” Ren­dered un-secret, and indeed unnec­es­sary, by the end of the Cold War, the whole under­ground com­plex under­went con­ver­sion into a for­lorn tourist attrac­tion. “In some of the bunker’s small­er, emp­ti­er rooms, videos were being shown on chunky old TV sets, doc­u­men­taries relat­ed to nuclear war and its sur­vival,” Nichol­son writes. “They includ­ed the noto­ri­ous pub­lic infor­ma­tion series Pro­tect and Sur­vive, twen­ty short episodes, basic ani­ma­tion, strange­ly ahead-of-its-time elec­tron­ic music, and a voice-over by Patrick Allen, deeply unsym­pa­thet­ic and unre­as­sur­ing, though you imag­ine he was sup­posed to be both. The titles in the series includ­ed ‘What to Put in Your Fall­out Room’ and ‘San­i­ta­tion Care and Casu­al­ties.’ ”

“ ‘Stay at Home,’ ” Nichol­son tells us, “remind­ed us that fall­out ‘can set­tle any­where, so no place in the Unit­ed King­dom is safer than any oth­er,’ and my favorite sin­gle sen­tence comes from the episode ‘Refuges’: ‘If you live in a car­a­van or oth­er build­ing of light­weight con­struc­tion with very lit­tle pro­tec­tion against fall­out, your local author­i­ty will be able to advise you on what to do’ — and there was a car­toon image of a tiny car­a­van that looked like it might be blown away by a good sneeze, nev­er mind a nuclear explo­sion.” The com­pi­la­tion above col­lects 51 min­utes of these and oth­er episodes of Pro­tect and Sur­vive, orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned by the British gov­ern­ment in the 1970s and meant for trans­mis­sion only in the case of an immi­nent nuclear attack on the coun­try. But episodes leaked, and the BBC pro­ceed­ed to broad­cast them absent that imme­di­ate threat, there­by ensur­ing the lega­cy of this Cold War media arti­fact beloved of irony-lov­ing Britons — that is to say, Britons — across the coun­try.

These vin­tage films will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Duck and Cov­er, or: How I Learned to Elude the Bomb

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

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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Matthew Weiner on The Art of Writing Mad Men: The Paris Review Interview

in Television | May 28th, 2014

mad-men-title

This week­end, AMC aired episode 7 of Mad Men’s final sea­son. The show will now take a break, until episodes 8–14 hit the air­waves ear­ly next year. Before you turn your atten­tion else­where, you may want to spend some time with the Paris Review’s big inter­view with Matthew Wein­er, the cre­ator of Mad Men. The inter­view cov­ers a lot of ground.

We learn that Wein­er is a par­tic­u­lar fan of John Cheev­er. “[W]ith John Cheev­er, I rec­og­nized myself in the voice of the nar­ra­tor.” “Cheev­er holds my atten­tion more than any oth­er writer. He is in every aspect of Mad Men, start­ing with the fact that Don lives in Ossin­ing on Bul­let Park Road.” (Find the Paris Review’s 1976 inter­view with Cheev­er here.)

We also dis­cov­er that Wein­er stud­ied poet­ry in col­lege with Christo­pher Reeve’s father, Frank Reeve, and there were a cou­ple of years when Wein­er con­sid­ered T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land “the most inter­est­ing thing in the world.”

Then the con­ver­sa­tion turns to Mad Men, where Wein­er reveals what’s at the heart of the show: “I’ve always said this is a show about becom­ing white. That’s the def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess in America—becoming a WASP. A WASP male.” “Don Drap­er knows he’s poor, very much in the mod­el of [Lee] Iacoc­ca or [Sam] Wal­ton, who came out of the Great Depres­sion, out of real­ly hum­ble begin­nings. Or like Con­rad Hilton, on the show. These men don’t take no for an answer, they build these big busi­ness­es, these empires, but real­ly it’s all based on fail­ure, inse­cu­ri­ty, and an iden­ti­ty mod­eled on some abstract ide­al of white pow­er.”

Wein­er has lots more to say, includ­ing about his days writ­ing for The Sopra­nos. Read the com­plete inter­view here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Gay Talese: Drink­ing at New York Times Put Mad Men to Shame

The Paris Review Inter­views Now Online

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Morgan Freeman & Fake Neil deGrasse Tyson Teach Physics While High on Helium and Grass

in Comedy, Physics, Television | May 27th, 2014

Viral video #1: In a new ad for the Sci­ence Chan­nel’s series, Through the Worm­hole, actor Mor­gan Free­man uses heli­um to entice view­ers into think­ing about how physi­cists are study­ing grav­i­ty in places where it acts quite strange­ly. It’s kind of a cryp­tic mes­sage, but it grabs your atten­tion, does­n’t it? Through the Worm­hole returns to the air­waves, with Sea­son 5, on June 4th.

Viral Video #2 asks you to imag­ine what hap­pens when you put the grass in Neil deGrasse Tyson. “Every­thing is star stuff. This piz­za, this cheese, this pep­per­oni.” That’s a reboot of Cos­mos that may actu­al­ly get rat­ings.

via io9 

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Thomas Dolby Explains How a Synthesizer Works on a Jim Henson Kids Show (1989)

in Music, Technology, Television | May 21st, 2014

We’ve all heard the musi­cal fruits of audio syn­the­sis, espe­cial­ly if we reg­u­lar­ly lis­ten to the pop of the 1980s. But how, exact­ly, does a syn­the­siz­er work? Ask a mod­ern elec­tron­ic-music enthu­si­ast and the answer may come out too tech­ni­cal, and at too much length, to bear. But pio­neer­ing­ly tech­nol­o­gy-mind­ed singer-song­writer Thomas Dol­by, he of “She Blind­ed Me with Sci­ence” (though I’ve always pre­fer his more ele­giac num­bers like “Air­waves”), can give you a clear­er, more con­cise expla­na­tion.


In fact, he gets it sim­ple to the point of child-friend­li­ness — so sim­ple that he gives it on a chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion pro­gram. The Ghost of Faffn­er Hall, which ran in late 1989 in Eng­land and Amer­i­ca, taught lessons about music with a gallery of famous per­form­ers — Bob­by McFer­rin, Joni Mitchell, James Tay­lor, Mark Knopfler — in a pup­pet-rich set­ting. Those pup­pets, the denizens (liv­ing and dead) of the tit­u­lar Faffn­er Hall, came built by Jim Hen­son’s Crea­ture Shop, known for their mas­tery of Mup­pet craft.

Dol­by’s illus­tra­tion of a syn­the­siz­er’s oper­a­tion involves an unusu­al work of Mup­petry: a fly in a match­box. “A syn­the­siz­er con­sists of two things,” he says, “an oscil­la­tor and a fil­ter. The oscil­la­tor con­trols the pitch of the sound, and the fil­ter con­trols the tone.” Out, then, comes the box and its slight­ly unwill­ing (Mup­pet) inhab­i­tant. “I want you to imag­ine the fly is an oscil­la­tor, and this box is a fil­ter.” Dol­by shakes the box, rep­re­sent­ing elec­tri­cal cur­rent through an oscil­la­tor, which makes the fright­ened fly buzz. “The hard­er I shake the box, the high­er the pitch!” To demon­strate fil­tra­tion, he opens and clos­es the match­box, harshen­ing the fly­’s wail (until, indeed, it turns into a cry of “Help!”). If you’d like to hear Dol­by talk more about the inter­sec­tion of his art and his tech­nol­o­gy at a high­er, albeit Mup­pet­less lev­el, have a lis­ten to his appear­ance last year on the Nerdist pod­cast. He long ago, in anoth­er con­text, stat­ed his goal of teach­ing peo­ple that syn­the­siz­ers “don’t have to sound like a crate of mori­bund wasps” — an inter­est­ing thing to accom­plish with a match­box and a super­in­tel­li­gent fly.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dol­by Geek Out and Sing “She Blind­ed Me With Sci­ence”

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

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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Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot Airs on American TV (1961): Starring Burgess Meredith & Zero Mostel

in Television, Theatre | May 18th, 2014

1961 saw the tele­vi­sion debuts of The Bob Newhart Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, ABC’s Wide World of Sports, Yogi Bear, and …um, Samuel Beck­et­t’s Wait­ing for Godot, famous­ly described by the­ater crit­ic Vivian Merci­er as “a play in which noth­ing hap­pens, twice.”

Burgess Mered­ith and Zero Mos­tel, both try­ing to sal­vage careers after being black­list­ed in the McCarthy peri­od, starred as Vladimir and Estragon, in WNTA-TV’s Play of the Week series’ no-frills pro­duc­tion. In con­trast to the recent Broad­way revival star­ring griz­zled,  grub­by  knights of the realm, Ian McK­ellen and Patrick Stew­art, Mered­ith and Mos­tel make a pret­ty harmless—and appar­ent­ly unharmed—team. Vladimir’s prostate trou­ble was scrubbed from the shoot­ing script, along with some 40 min­utes of the stage ver­sion, five years after its dis­as­trous Amer­i­can pre­miere. 

Alan Schnei­der, who direct­ed that pro­duc­tion, returned to helm the Play of the Week, along with orig­i­nal Amer­i­can cast mem­bers Kurt Kaszn­er and Alvin Epstein, repris­ing their sup­port­ing turns as Poz­zo and Lucky. Schnei­der appears to have had his hands full with the always-larg­er-than-life Mos­tel who chews plen­ty of scenery in addi­tion to his car­rot.

For his part, Mos­tel stat­ed that he “wished to be re-black­list­ed” if that would keep him from ever hav­ing to work with that direc­tor again.

Despite the ten­sion, he and Mered­ith achieve a win­some Lau­rel and Hardy-like rap­port as they plod up and down a paint­ed road with chore­o­graphed aim­less­ness.

It’s still a bit hard for me to imag­ine Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion audi­ences tun­ing-in in num­bers suf­fi­cient to jus­ti­fy the effort.

To be fair, there were a lot few­er chan­nels then. Play of the Week was a high brow project serv­ing up seri­ous the­atri­cal work on the small screen. The first episode was Judith Ander­son­’s Medea. Com­pared to that, or Shake­speare, or Ibsen, a prostate-free Godot might be passed off as tele­vised enter­tain­ment the whole fam­i­ly could tol­er­ate for an hour and forty-nine min­utes.

If you’re up for it, the entire pro­duc­tion is yours for the view­ing below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Rare Audio: Samuel Beck­ett Reads Two Poems From His Nov­el Watt

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the award-win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Rehearsal Sessions For Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged Appearance (1993)

in Music, Television | May 14th, 2014

Debut­ing in 1989, MTV’s Unplugged promised to cure the culture’s slick 80s hang­over with acoustic gui­tars and earnest, cof­fee-shop inti­ma­cy from the 90s biggest stars (Mari­ah Carey) and a select few clas­sic giants (McCart­ney, Clap­ton, Dylan, a reformed Kiss). In a series doc­u­ment­ing some icon­ic last or near-last performances—from 10,000 Mani­acs, Alice in Chains—per­haps the most icon­ic was the Novem­ber, 1993 appear­ance of Nir­vana (below), whose trou­bled singer/guitarist over­dosed just weeks into the band’s 1994 Euro­pean tour, then took his life in April of that year. For chil­dren of the decade, Nirvana’s Unplugged appear­ance, though hard to watch in hind­sight, per­haps defines the 90s more than any oth­er TV moment. And yet, writes Andrew Wal­lace Cham­ings in The Atlantic, “it’s worth con­sid­er­ing the per­for­mance as a work of music, not mythol­o­gy. Because as music, it’s incred­i­ble.”

You want inti­ma­cy? “Parts of the Nir­vana set,” writes Cham­ings, “feel so per­son­al it’s awk­ward.” Cobain is cranky in between-song ban­ter, hunched over his gui­tar in his puke green thrift-store cardi­gan, snap­ping at his band­mates and the audi­ence. His per­for­mances are intense and eerie, par­tic­u­lar­ly his cov­er of Lead Belly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” the last song of the evening, which Neil Young described as “unearth­ly, like a were­wolf.” The band nev­er hid behind a pre-fab­ri­cat­ed mys­tique, but their acoustic set high­lights just how emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed Cobain was in music—his own and oth­ers. Joined by Germs (and lat­er Foo Fighers) gui­tarist Pat Smear, they most­ly eschewed the hits, and played cov­ers by Cobain’s favorite bands: Meat Pup­pets, Bowie, The Vase­lines. You want even more inti­ma­cy? Watch the Unplugged rehearsal ses­sions at the top of the post.

Where the tele­vised Unplugged episode has the loose, infor­mal vibe of band prac­tice with an audi­ence, this rehearsal footage is more of a sound­check, but with some tru­ly beau­ti­ful per­for­mances. Cobain tweaks tech­ni­cal details and gets snip­py with the engi­neer. Accord­ing to sev­er­al peo­ple involved, the rehearsal ses­sions were espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult, with Cobain suf­fer­ing from with­draw­al and gen­er­al­ly ner­vous and unhap­py, almost bail­ing on the show at the last minute. Cobain biog­ra­ph­er Charles Cross quotes one observ­er as say­ing “There was no jok­ing, no smiles, no fun com­ing from him.” Cobain’s request that the stu­dio be dec­o­rat­ed with black can­dles and stargaz­er lilies prompt­ed the pro­duc­er to ask, “You mean like a funer­al?” “Exact­ly,” he said, “like a funer­al.” But it’s the band’s insis­tence that the show be tai­lored to their anti-rock star per­son­al­i­ty that makes the per­for­mances so mem­o­rable. “We’d seen the oth­er Unpluggeds and didn’t like many of them,” recalled Dave Grohl, “because most bands would treat them like rock shows… except with acoustic gui­tars.” Nirvana’s Unplugged was some­thing entire­ly dif­fer­ent. A tele­vised swan song that was also, in Chaming’s words, “the pret­ti­est noise the band has ever made.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nir­vana Plays in a Radio Shack, the Day After Record­ing its First Demo Tape (1988)

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

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

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Watch Gumbasia the Jazzy Stop Motion Film That Gave Birth to Gumby (1955)

in Animation, K-12, Television | May 7th, 2014

Like many in the Hon­ey­comb Kids gen­er­a­tion, I did­n’t prop­er­ly appre­ci­ate chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion icon Gum­by until Eddie Mur­phy par­o­died him on Sat­ur­day Night Live. This sparked a revival. Watch­ing Gum­by episodes in the com­pa­ny of oth­er mer­ry young adults reframed my pre­vi­ous­ly held view of him as a rel­ic from a time when TV was bor­ing. Turns out that Gum­by and his equine side­kick Pokey were actu­al­ly pret­ty fun­ny, weird-in-a-good-way, and far more soul­ful than the wit­less flat ani­ma­tion jam­ming the air­waves of my 70s child­hood.

Then, in 2006, the Muse­um of the Mov­ing Image had an exhib­it devot­ed to the work of Art Clokey, father of Gum­by.

I decid­ed to take the kids, gam­bling that they might respond to Gum­by as I did now, not the way I did when I was their age. Their screen time was pret­ty lim­it­ed back then, and as a result, they’d avid­ly watch just about any­thing.

The first video we encoun­tered was Gum­ba­sia, the exper­i­men­tal, char­ac­ter-free, stop motion riff above that Clokey made as a stu­dent at USC. It was pro­duced in 1953 and released in 1955.

Not exact­ly what I’d been prim­ing the chil­dren to expect on the sub­way ride over.

“That’s Gum­by?” they cried in dis­may. “That cube?”

No. But those mor­ph­ing cubes and squig­gles did give birth to an empire, after pro­duc­er and pres­i­dent of the Motion Pic­ture Pro­duc­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, Sam Engel, offered to bankroll a pilot, declar­ing Gum­ba­sia the most excit­ing film he’d ever seen in his life. Clokey was teach­ing Eng­lish at the Har­vard Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my. Engel’s sole wish was to improve the qual­i­ty of chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming. He asked Clokey if he could “make lit­tle clay fig­ures out of that clay and ani­mate them.”

Clokey did just that, with Engel bankrolling the pilot, “Gum­by on the Moon.” The pro­duc­er was so pleased with the result, he refused to take a cut when Gum­by was giv­en a sev­en year con­tract at NBC.

Imag­ine a Cin­derel­la sto­ry like that hap­pen­ing today!

If this small morsel of Gum­by his­to­ry leaves you crav­ing more, book your flight for the inau­gur­al Gum­by Fest in Glen­do­ra, Cal­i­for­nia, where Gum­by grew to matu­ri­ty in “an unas­sum­ing indus­tri­al build­ing.”

You can find Gum­ba­sia in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf­fi­ti Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion Cre­ative­ly Depicts the Evo­lu­tion of Life

Watch “Bot­tle,” an Award-Win­ning Stop Motion Ani­mat­ed Tale of Transocean­ic Cor­re­spon­dence

Hard­er Than It Looks: How to Make a Great Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Mr. Rogers Introduces Kids to Experimental Electronic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nelson (1968)

in Education, K-12, Music, Television | May 2nd, 2014


Exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic musi­cian and inven­tor Bruce Haack’s com­po­si­tions expand­ed many a young con­scious­ness, and taught kids to dance, move, med­i­tate, and to be end­less­ly curi­ous about the tech­nol­o­gy of sound. All of this makes him the per­fect guest for Fred Rogers, who despite his total­ly square demeanor loved bring­ing his audi­ence unusu­al artists of all kinds. In the clips above and below from the first, 1968 sea­son of Mr. Roger’s Neigh­bor­hood, Haack intro­duces Rogers and a group of young­sters to the “musi­cal com­put­er,” a home­made ana­log syn­the­siz­er of his own invention—one of many he cre­at­ed from house­hold items, most of which inte­grat­ed human touch and move­ment into their con­trols, as you’ll see above. In both clips, Haack and long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Esther Nel­son sing and play charm­ing songs as Nel­son leads them in var­i­ous move­ment exer­cis­es. (The remain­der of the sec­ond video most­ly fea­tures Mr. Roger’s cat.)

Although he’s seen a revival among elec­tron­ic musi­cians and DJs, Haack became best known in his career as a com­pos­er of children’s music, and for good rea­son. His 1962 debut kid’s record Dance, Sing & Lis­ten is an absolute clas­sic of the genre, com­bin­ing a dizzy­ing range of musi­cal styles—country, clas­si­cal, pop, medieval, and exper­i­men­tal electronic—with far-out spo­ken word from Haack and Nel­son. They fol­lowed this up with two more iter­a­tions of Dance, Sing & Lis­ten, then The Way Out Record for Chil­dren, The Elec­tron­ic Record for Chil­dren, the amaz­ing Dance to the Music, and sev­er­al more, all them weird­er and more won­der­ful than maybe any­thing you’ve ever heard. (Don’t believe me? Take a lis­ten to “Soul Trans­porta­tion,” “EIO (New Mac­Don­ald),” or the absolute­ly enchant­i­ng “Saint Basil,” with its Doors‑y organ out­ro.) A psy­che­del­ic genius, Haack also made grown-up acid rock in the form of 1970’s The Elec­tric Lucifer, which is a bit like if Andrew Lloyd Web­ber and Tim Rice had writ­ten Jesus Christ Super­star on heavy dos­es of LSD and banks of ana­log syn­the­siz­ers.

While Haack­’s Mr. Rogers appear­ance may not have seemed like much at the time, in hind­sight this is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment of an artist who’s been called “The King of Tech­no” for his for­ward-look­ing sounds meet­ing the cut­ting edge in children’s pro­gram­ming. It’s a tes­ta­ment to how much the coun­ter­cul­ture influ­enced ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion. Many of the pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion­al exper­i­ments of the six­ties have since become his­tor­i­cal curiosi­ties, replaced by insipid cor­po­rate mer­chan­dis­ing. What Haack and Nel­son’s musi­cal approach tells me is that we’d do well to revis­it the edu­ca­tion­al cli­mate of that day and take a few lessons from its freeform exper­i­men­ta­tion and open­ness. I’ll cer­tain­ly be play­ing these records for my daugh­ter.

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Mr. Rogers Goes to Wash­ing­ton

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

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