David Niven Presents an Oscar and Gets Interrupted by a Streaker (1974)

in Film, Television | March 2nd, 2014

While Acad­e­my Awards will no doubt have its share of dra­ma and sur­pris­es tonight, there will like­ly be few inci­dents of pub­lic nudi­ty. That wasn’t always the case with the Oscars.

Back in 1974, co-host David Niv­en was about to intro­duce Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor when a long-haired, mus­tached nude man sprint­ed out on stage and flashed a peace sign (among oth­er things) before a shocked audi­ence. He jogged from one side of the stage to the oth­er before slip­ping off into the wings, as Hen­ry Manci­ni cued his orches­tra to start play­ing music.

After he regained his com­po­sure, Niv­en quipped, “Well, ladies and gen­tle­men, that was almost bound to hap­pen… But isn’t it fas­ci­nat­ing to think that prob­a­bly the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by strip­ping off and show­ing his short­com­ings?”

Right from the begin­ning, how­ev­er, some won­dered if the inci­dent wasn’t in fact planned by pro­duc­ers hop­ing to give the audi­ence a jolt. Instead of arrest­ing the streak­er (and cart­ing him direct­ly to a Super Max prison, as would hap­pen today), he was giv­en a press con­fer­ence.

At the press con­fer­ence, he said that his name was Robert Opel and false­ly described him­self as an “adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive” dur­ing the press con­fer­ence. When asked why he did the deed, Opel respond­ed, “You know, peo­ple should­n’t be ashamed of being nude in pub­lic. Besides — it is a hell of a way to launch a career.”

The inci­dent did turn Opel briefly into a celebri­ty. He appeared (clothed) on the Mike Dou­glas Show and he was even hired to repeat the stunt at a par­ty for Rudolph Nureyev and Mar­vin Ham­lisch.

Though he was des­tined to go down in his­to­ry as the naked Oscar guy, he was also an avant-garde artist and a leader in the nascent gay rights move­ment. After his brush with fame, Opel moved to the Bay Area where he found­ed Fey-Wey Stu­dios, which was one of the first art gal­leries to show­case artists like Robert Map­plethor­pe and Tom of Fin­land. He also staged an Ani­ta Bryant look-alike con­test at the height of the for­mer beau­ty queen’s anti-gay pub­lic cam­paign. He was mur­dered in his gallery in 1979 dur­ing a bun­gled rob­bery.

Bay Area artist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er BIRON, who was friends with Opel dur­ing his San Fran­cis­co days, remem­bered him fond­ly. “Uncom­pro­mis­ing and unapolo­getic, he blurred the lines between art and life as he trav­eled beyond the con­fines of accept­ed behav­ior. Har­vey Milk and then Robert Opel both killed with­in a few months.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash!’

33 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web

80 Years of Acad­e­my Award Win­ning Films in Posters

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.

 

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R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their National Television Debut on The David Letterman Show (1983)

in Music, Television | March 1st, 2014

It’s hard for me to believe that we now live in a post‑R.E.M. world. Also a post-Son­ic Youth world, post-Pix­ies world (as far as I’m con­cerned), etc. The bands of my errant youth are no more; some­times it feels like all I can do is toss out the occa­sion­al, half-heart­ed “get off my lawn” or mum­ble bemus­ed­ly, “what’s a Lorde?” when con­tem­plat­ing the cur­rent state of music.

Yet all is not lost for “aging hipsters”—in the par­lance of the blog Rock Turtle­neck!. Though our pop cul­ture may seem to slip into an irrel­e­vant ice age, we can at least warm our­selves at the flick­er­ing screen, where Youtube caches troves of footage of our bygone heroes—like the video above of R.E.M. play­ing “Radio Free Europe” for their first appear­ance on TV in 1983.

Now, this was before the time of my fan­dom, which dates from the lat­er 80s. Still, it’s always a joy to see one of my all time favorites roar­ing in their lion­heart­ed youth.

The band appeared on Let­ter­man, pro­mot­ing their debut, Mur­mur. The venue is no sur­prise, giv­en Dave’s con­sis­tent cham­pi­oning of instant-clas­sic Amer­i­can artists. But after this appear­ance, they would not return to his show for anoth­er 12 years, this time to play “Crush With Eye­lin­er” in the midst of their 1995 Mon­ster tour (above). I loved R.E.M. no less then, but they were pros by that time, not the scrap­py, jan­g­ly South­ern alt-rock­ers bold­ly chal­leng­ing the ortho­doxy of bloat­ed sta­di­um rock.

I think Rock Turtle­neck! does not over­state its case in claim­ing that the band’s nation­al tele­vi­sion debut “was the col­lege rock equiv­a­lent of The Bea­t­les play­ing the Ed Sul­li­van Show in 1964.” Well, maybe just a lit­tle, but it’s still a piv­otal moment in the his­to­ry of alt-rock. Mur­mur appears as num­ber 1 on this list of the “best albums of 1983”—calculated from “over­all rank­ings in over 13,000 great­est album charts”—followed by oth­er new wave and alter­na­tive clas­sics like the Vio­lent Femmes’s epony­mous debut, The Police’s Syn­chronic­i­ty, U2’s War, Tom Wait’s Sword­fishtrom­bones, and New Order’s Pow­er, Cor­rup­tion and Lies. Sim­pler times, sim­pler times….

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:

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

R.E.M.’s Final Encore (and an Ear­ly Con­cert from Ger­many)

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

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

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Crime Jazz: How Miles Davis, Count Basie & Duke Ellington Created Soundtracks for Noir Films & TV

in Film, Music, Television | February 23rd, 2014

When we think of film noir, we tend to think of a mood best set by a look: shad­ow and light (most­ly shad­ow), grim but visu­al­ly rich weath­er, near-depop­u­lat­ed urban streets. You’ll see plen­ty of that pulled off at the height of the craft in the movies that make up “noir­chae­ol­o­gist” Eddie Muller’s list of 25 noir pic­tures that will endure, which we fea­tured last week. But what will you hear? Though no one com­po­si­tion­al style dom­i­nat­ed the sound­tracks of films noirs, you’ll cer­tain­ly hear more than a few sol­id pieces of crime jazz. Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, writ­ing about Rhi­no’s epony­mous com­pi­la­tion album, defines this musi­cal genre as “jazzy theme music from 1950s TV shows and movies in which very bad peo­ple do very bad things.” She links to PopCult’s col­lec­tion of clas­sic crime jazz sound­track album cov­ers, from The Third Man to Cha­rade (the best Hitch­cock film, of course, that Hitch­cock nev­er made), to The Man With the Gold­en Arm, all as evoca­tive as the music itself.

“Pre­vi­ous­ly, movie music meant sweep­ing orches­tral themes or tra­di­tion­al Broad­way-style musi­cals,” says PopCult. “But with the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of bebop and hard bop as the sound of urban cool, stu­dios began latch­ing onto the now beat as a way to make their movies seem grit­ty or ‘street.’ ”

At Jazz.com, Alan Kurtz writes about the spread of crime jazz from straight-up film noir to all sorts of pro­duc­tions hav­ing to do with life out­side the law: “In movies and TV, jazz accom­pa­nied the entire sor­did range of police-blot­ter behav­ior, from gam­bling, pros­ti­tu­tion and drug addic­tion to theft, assault, mur­der and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” Get your­self in the spir­it of all those mid­cen­tu­ry degen­era­cies and more with the tracks fea­tured here, all of which will take you straight to an ear­li­er kind of mean street: the theme from The M Squad, “two min­utes of may­hem by Count Basie and his mob of heav­ies”; Miles Davis’ “Au Bar du Petit Bac,” impro­vised by Davis and his Parisian band against Louis Malle’s Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows; and Ray Antho­ny’s “Peter Gunn Theme,” a “quick­ie cov­er” that “beat Hen­ry Mancini’s orig­i­nal to the punch.”

And final­ly we have Duke Elling­ton’s score for Anato­my of a Mur­der, direct­ed by Otto Pre­minger in 1959.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Noir Films

1959: The Year that Changed Jazz

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Johnny Rotten Goes Before TV’s Judge Judy in 1997 … and Wins!

in Music, Television | February 20th, 2014

In the clip above, ex-Sex Pis­tols leader John Lydon (aka “John­ny Rot­ten”) goes before TV’s Judge Judy in a 1997 episode of the day­time show. How and why this came about I can­not begin to imag­ine. The case is straight­for­ward enough. Robert Williams, for­mer drum­mer of Lydon’s post-Pis­tols band Pub­lic Image Lim­it­ed, brought suit against the punk icon for breach of con­tract and assault and bat­tery. Judy obvi­ous­ly doesn’t care much for Williams and calls him a “nud­nik.” She seems to like Lydon, though, despite hav­ing to shush his snide out­bursts numer­ous times. It’s also clear she has absolute­ly no idea who he is. “I don’t know from this band,” she says, “This last band I heard was Lawrence Welk… Jim­my Dorsey… Tom­my Dorsey… I don’t know. Those are bands!”

Judy ulti­mate­ly calls out Williams for expect­ing so much order amidst the chaos of the music busi­ness, and she dis­miss­es his suit. And as for John­ny Rotten’s odd fif­teen min­utes on day­time tele­vi­sion? “Per­haps this was the moment Lydon’s ambi­tion as a TV pre­sen­ter was born,” mus­es Dan­ger­ous Minds. Who knows? It’s a long way from the famous Bill Grundy inter­view, yet per­haps not so far from his tele­vised con­fronta­tions of the fol­low­ing few decades. But con­sid­er as evi­dence a much ear­li­er Lydon appear­ance on a 1979 TV court show, “Juke Box Jury” (above), where Lydon and a pan­el of celebri­ties pass ver­dicts on the cur­rent pop hits: “It ain’t the Don­na Sum­mers I know. I hate it. It was awful!”

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sex Pis­tols Front­man John­ny Rot­ten Weighs In On Lady Gaga, Paul McCart­ney, Madon­na & Katy Per­ry

Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s … John Lydon in a But­ter Com­mer­cial?

John­ny Rotten’s Cor­dial Let­ter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Next to the Sex Pis­tols, You’re ‘a Piss Stain’

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

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Jorge Luis Borges Chats with William F. Buckley on Firing Line (1977)

in Literature, Television | February 17th, 2014

Despite his respect­ed facil­i­ty with the Eng­lish lan­guage, Argen­tine mas­ter crafts­man of short fic­tion Jorge Luis Borges did his best work in his native Span­ish. Though we remem­ber pro­lif­ic inter­view­er and even more pro­lif­ic writer William F. Buck­ley for his for­mi­da­ble com­mand of Eng­lish above all else, he did­n’t even learn it as his first lan­guage, start­ing in on his Eng­lish edu­ca­tion at age sev­en, hav­ing already learned Span­ish (not to men­tion French).

This must have placed him well to appre­ci­ate Borges’ writ­ing, and indeed, in his intro­duc­tion to their Fir­ing Line con­ver­sa­tion above, Buck­ley cites Borges’ rep­u­ta­tion as the great­est, most influ­en­tial writer then alive. “We met in Buenos Aires, in 1977, dur­ing the mil­i­tary jun­ta days,” Buck­ley recalls of the tap­ing in a Paris Review inter­view. “He seemed aston­ish­ing­ly frail, but he spoke with­out a pause.”

Buck­ley goes on to pro­vide many choice quotes from Borges’ answers to ques­tions about his sight (“When you are blind, time flows in a dif­fer­ent way. It flows, let’s say, on an easy slope”), his love of Amer­i­can writ­ers like Emer­son and Melville, his lan­guages (“Of course, my Latin is very rusty. But still, as I once wrote, to have for­got­ten Latin is already, in itself, a gift”), and where he finds beau­ty and art (“A man may say a very fine thing, not being aware of it. I am hear­ing fine sen­tences all the time from the man in the street, for exam­ple. From any­body”), and how he taught (“I tried to teach my stu­dents not literature—that can’t be taught—but the love of lit­er­a­ture”). For more on that last, see also “The Dag­gers of Jorge Luis Borges,” a piece on the new book Pro­fes­sor Borges: A Course on Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, by Michael Green­berg in the New York Review of Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 33 Vol­umes of Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Borges: Pro­file of a Writer Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Two Draw­ings by Jorge Luis Borges Illus­trate the Author’s Obses­sions

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Watch All of The Beatles’ Historic Appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, 50 Years Ago

in History, Music, Television | February 10th, 2014

As you sure­ly know by now, The Bea­t­les invad­ed the U.S. by way of the Ed Sul­li­van Show fifty years ago yes­ter­day. What you may not know is that they appeared for three con­sec­u­tive Sun­day night broad­casts that year, begin­ning on Feb­ru­ary 9, 1964. That per­for­mance gar­nered a record 73 mil­lion view­ers and took place at the now his­toric Ed Sul­li­van The­ater. The sec­ond show on Feb­ru­ary 16  was broad­cast from Mia­mi Beach where the then-Cas­sius Clay and Son­ny Lis­ton were pro­mot­ing their famous bout on Feb. 25. The third broad­cast, Feb­ru­ary 23, showed a per­for­mance taped ear­li­er in the day of the orig­i­nal Feb. 9 appear­ance. Watch all three of those ’64 broad­casts above. (The band made a final live appear­ance on the show on August 14, 1965—watch “I Feel Fine” from that broad­cast below.)

It seemed like every­one want­ed a piece of The Beatles—the Amer­i­can press, the scream­ing hordes of teenage fans, even cer­tain British politi­cians—but the first Sul­li­van appear­ance was a gam­ble, arranged by their very savvy man­ag­er Bri­an Epstein to break the band in the States. Sul­li­van stood behind the band’s ini­tial head­lin­ing book­ing, despite his producer’s objec­tions, lat­er telling the New York Times, “I made up my mind that this was the same sort of mass hit hys­te­ria that had char­ac­ter­ized the Elvis Pres­ley days.”

Sul­li­van, the leg­end goes, first noticed the crazed response the band inspired (see above) when he wit­nessed “more than 1,500 young­sters lin[ing] the rooftop gar­dens of the Queen’s Build­ing and oth­ers con­gre­gat­ed on the ground” at Heathrow air­port after the group returned home from a trip to Stock­holm in Octo­ber, 1963. While the actu­al sto­ry of the first book­ing is a bit more com­pli­cat­ed, writes Bea­t­les’ his­to­ri­an Bruce Spiz­er, it still speaks to Sul­li­van’s impec­ca­ble instincts.

What was it like to be a view­er of that first broad­cast as a young fan? Above, Den­nis Mitchell, host of the “Break­fast with the Bea­t­les” radio show, remem­bers the moment. “Every­thing changed after that,” he says. Although the Sul­li­van broad­casts are mem­o­rable for all sorts of his­tor­i­cal rea­sons, “in the end, after it all,” says Mitchell, “it was the songs, it was the music.”

See­ing it on Ed Sul­li­van was over­whelm­ing, and the start of it all, but then we took it into our bed­rooms with the record play­ers and got deep­er into the music, because we knew that even though they’d done four or five songs on the Ed Sul­li­van show, there was more.

As the band evolved polit­i­cal­ly and styl­is­ti­cal­ly, says Mitchell, their fans “were all along for the ride. And they gen­uine­ly, it was almost like a mag­ic wand, changed things by chang­ing them­selves.” Could such a cul­tur­al moment hap­pen again? “No,” says Mitchell, “not at the lev­el that it did and not with the sig­nif­i­cance that it did.” In the fifty years since The Beatle’s arrival on U.S. shores, the world seems to have become both more frag­ment­ed and more close­ly drawn togeth­er, but we live in such a vast­ly dif­fer­ent media land­scape than the one that pro­duced the Ed Sul­li­van Show—and the last­ing fame of Elvis, The Supremes, and The Bea­t­les. After fifty years of post-Bea­t­les’ pop music, it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine a tele­vi­sion per­for­mance hav­ing such a wide­spread impact that it almost sin­gle­hand­ed­ly trans­forms an entire gen­er­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig Filmed in Jan­u­ary 1969

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

The Kinks’ Ray Davies Reviews the Bea­t­les’ 1966 Album Revolver; Calls It “A Load of Rub­bish”

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

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

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Comedian Reggie Watts Teaches Students Bad Science in 70s Sitcom-Style Show, Teach

in Comedy, Education, Television | February 9th, 2014

Not since Gabe Kaplan’s Mr. Kot­ter has there been such a hip, big-haired, TV teacher to “help make you smart and lis­ten to your feel­ings, too.”

Does it real­ly mat­ter if come­di­an, musi­cian, and now web series star Reg­gie Watts’ Teach is deeply unclear on the sci­ence he’s impart­ing, if the kids in his class­room are learn­ing impor­tant life lessons? Why it’s uncool to bul­ly sin­gle-celled organ­isms, for instance. (“You might be mul­ti­cel­lu­lar but there’s no need to be cel­lulist.”)

As we all know, the best teach­ers awak­en their stu­dents’ curios­i­ty, send them bound­ing off in pur­suit of knowl­edge, rather than spoon-feed­ing them cor­rect answers.

That’s exact­ly what Mr. Watts did for—or pos­si­bly to—me when he talked about ‘tons: pro­tons, con­tons, decep­ti­cons, and tauntauns.  Had he said, “That last one refers to a species of imag­i­nary omniv­o­rous rep­tomam­mals from the 3rd high­est gross­ing fran­chise in film his­to­ry,” I would’ve spelled it “ton­tons” with­out a sec­ond thought. But because he delib­er­ate­ly left things a lit­tle vague, ask­ing, “How many of you have seen The Empire Strikes Back?” I was moti­vat­ed to do a lit­tle research. Star Wars was nev­er my bag…

It bog­gles the mind how much more I would’ve learned had the Inter­net exist­ed back when I was in high school. (Teach’s class­room is most def­i­nite­ly a blast from the past—not an iPad in sight and the over­head pro­jec­tor restored to its place of hon­or. The quick­ly uptilt­ed flask is, of course, time­less.)

The open­ing cred­its sug­gest that we should look for­ward to an edu­ca­tion in Lit­er­a­ture, Music, and His­to­ry in upcom­ing episodes.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cal Come­di­an Reg­gie Watts Rein­vents Van Halen’s Clas­sic, “Pana­ma”

Free Com­ic Books Turns Kids Onto Physics: Start With the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s graph­ic nov­el, Peanut, is a Young Adult Library Ser­vices Asso­ci­a­tion 2014 Quick for Reluc­tant Young Read­ers. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Reader: A Touching South African TV Commercial Celebrates Literacy and Scotch

in Food & Drink, Television | February 8th, 2014

In the world of adver­tis­ing, books and booze rarely go togeth­er, espe­cial­ly if you’re sell­ing beer in Amer­i­ca. But when it comes to scotch and whisky, you’ll find some excep­tions. Last year, Dewars chan­neled the ghost of Charles Bukows­ki to sell its scotch. And now Bells, a British Whisky mak­er, aired a com­mer­cial in South Africa show­ing an elder­ly man learn­ing to read — all so that, touch­ing­ly, he could read a book authored by his own son. You can watch a behind-the-scenes, mak­ing-of video here.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dewars Chan­nels the Ghost of Charles Bukows­ki to Sell Scotch

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

500 Free eBooks: Down­load Great Books for Free

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