William S. Burroughs on Saturday Night Live, 1981

in Literature, Television | February 5th, 2014

Today marks the 100th birth­day of beat writer William S. Bur­roughs (1914–1997). Grab a bot­tle of wine … prefer­ably cheap wine … and let’s trav­el back to Novem­ber 7, 1981. That’s when Bur­roughs made his first appear­ance on Amer­i­can nation­al tele­vi­sion. And quite appro­pri­ate­ly, it was on the irrev­er­ent, late-night com­e­dy show, Sat­ur­day Night Live. As you’ll see, actress Lau­ren Hut­ton made the intro­duc­tion, set­ting up Bur­roughs to read from Naked Lunch (1959) and Nova Express (1964). The clip itself is an out­take from the open­ing scene of Bur­roughs, a 1983 doc­u­men­tary by Howard Brookn­er, which is cur­rent­ly get­ting restored.  We orig­i­nal­ly fea­tured this video back in ear­ly 2012. Since then we’ve brought you many oth­er intrigu­ing posts on Bur­roughs, whose life and art pro­vides so much to talk about. See some of our favorites below:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs’ The Dis­ci­pline of D.E.: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

“The Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Read by William S. Bur­roughs and Shot by Gus Van Sant

William S. Bur­roughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Orig­i­nal Bands

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Bur­roughs’ Free Short Course on Cre­ative Read­ing

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The Greatest Jazz Films Ever Features Classic Performances by Miles, Dizzy, Bird, Billie & More

in Film, Music, Television | February 5th, 2014

Though both have their roots in the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, jazz and cin­e­ma came of age as 20th cen­tu­ry art forms, and they very often did so togeth­er (though not always in the most taste­ful ways). Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer intro­duced the world to talkies. Cabaret, Lady Sings the Blues, The Cot­ton Club are all well-known fic­tion­al films that near­ly any­one might name if asked about the sub­ject. And though Ken Burns’ Jazz may seem like a defin­i­tive state­ment in jazz doc­u­men­tary, for decades, film­mak­ers have made jazz musi­cians their cen­tral sub­ject—for exam­ple, in jazz fan-favorites like Min­gus and Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er. Before these excel­lent, if some­times painful, por­traits, there were short films like Life mag­a­zine pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gjon Mili’s 1944 Jam­min’ the Blues with Lester Young and oth­er bop stal­warts, and 1950’s Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic, a selec­tion of clips fea­tur­ing Cole­man Hawkins, Char­lie Park­er, Lester Young, Bud­dy Rich, Ella Fitzger­ald, and oth­ers per­form­ing at Nor­man Granz’s leg­endary series of con­certs.

You’ll see excerpts from both Jam­min’ the Blues and Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic above in The Great­est Jazz Films Ever, a two-disc DVD set that appears to be out of print. (New copies cur­rent­ly retail on Ama­zon for any­where from $259.00 to almost $4,000, but you can watch it free online.) This great­est hits col­lec­tion also includes high­lights from sev­er­al tele­vi­sion spe­cials like Be Bop’s Nest—a rare Char­lie Park­er appear­ance with Dizzy Gille­spie on the short-lived vari­ety show Stage Entrance—and “The Sound of Miles Davis,” a 1959 episode of tele­vi­sion show The Robert Her­ridge The­ater that show­cased one of Davis’ most cel­e­brat­ed ensem­bles.

You’ll also see excerpts from The Sound of Jazz, which Fresh Sound Records calls “one of the great glo­ri­ous moments on tele­vi­sion,” and which con­tains per­for­mances from Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Lester Young, Thelo­nious Monk, the Count Basie Orches­tra, and more. Final­ly, we get excerpts from a 1959 tele­vi­sion spe­cial called Jazz From Stu­dio 61, fea­tur­ing the orig­i­nal Ahmad Jamal Trio with the Ben Web­ster Quin­tet. The Great­est Jazz Films Ever is an impres­sive and endur­ing col­lec­tion of doc­u­ments from the gold­en age of jazz. While the empha­sis here is gen­er­al­ly on musi­cian­ship, not film­mak­ing, it’s a col­lec­tion that also demon­strates jazz’s close rela­tion­ship to film and tele­vi­sion in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. All­mu­sic has a com­plete track­list of the col­lec­tion. And for a detailed break­down of each clip, you won’t want to pass up a scroll through this help­ful French site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Jam­min’ the Blues,’ by Gjon Mili

‘The Sound of Miles Davis’: Clas­sic 1959 Per­for­mance with John Coltrane

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

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

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Ridley Scott on the Making of Apple’s Iconic “1984” Commercial, Aired on Super Bowl Sunday in 1984

in Technology, Television | February 2nd, 2014

“I like to claim that I bought the sec­ond Mac­in­tosh com­put­er ever sold in Europe,” writes actor, come­di­an, writer, wit, and die-hard Apple enthu­si­ast Stephen Fry in a Tele­graph essay mark­ing the Mac­in­tosh com­put­er’s 30th anniver­sary. “My friend and hero Dou­glas Adams was in the queue ahead of me. For all I know some­one some­where had bought one ten min­utes ear­li­er, but these were the first two that the only shop sell­ing them in Lon­don had in stock on the 24th Jan­u­ary 1984, so I’m stick­ing to my sto­ry.”

Fry had found the only com­put­er that made him want to write; “I couldn’t wait to get to it every morn­ing,” he remem­bers. He did­n’t even need con­vinc­ing from “1984,” Rid­ley Scot­t’s “leg­endary com­mer­cial” above, which he did­n’t see “until it crept onto Eng­lish tele­vi­sion screens way past its dra­mat­ic Super Bowl debut.”

Now that we’ve come upon the 30th anniver­sary of that dra­mat­ic Super Bowl debut, why not get a lit­tle insight from the man who direct­ed it? In the clip just above, Scott, who by that time already had the rich and trou­bling futur­is­tic visions Alien and Blade Run­ner under his belt, talks about his expe­ri­ence bring­ing the sto­ry­boards — auda­cious by the tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial stan­dard of the era, let alone for per­son­al com­put­ers — onto the screen. He dis­cuss­es look­ing to the past for his “slight­ly deca­dent-look­ing” future, hang­ing jet engines on the set as an act of “good dra­mat­ic bull­shit,” putting out a “fright­en­ing” cast­ing call for a back­ground full of skin­heads, get­ting the total­i­tar­i­an text for Big Broth­er to intone, and find­ing a young lady who could swing a ham­mer. And what would he have done with an even big­ger bud­get? “Not very much. I think we nailed it.” As, Fry and his fel­low user-enthu­si­asts agree, did Apple.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Apple Ad Ever Aired on TV

Mar­tin Scors­ese Appears in New Apple Ad with Siri, Plays on His Chill­ing Cameo in Taxi Dri­ver

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Nev­er Aired)

Rid­ley Scott Demys­ti­fies the Art of Sto­ry­board­ing (and How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Project)

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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New York’s Famous Chelsea Hotel and Its Creative Residents Revisited in a 1981 Documentary

in History, Television | January 31st, 2014

Last year, we fea­tured a clip of Nico singing “Chelsea Girls” at the Hotel Chelsea, the much-mythol­o­gized Man­hat­tan insti­tu­tion that, at one time or anoth­er, housed a range of cul­tur­al fig­ures includ­ing Mark Twain, Bob Dylan, Dylan Thomas, Charles Bukows­ki, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Pat­ti Smith, Robert Map­plethor­pe, Allen Gins­berg, Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son, Iggy Pop, Gaby Hoff­mann, Sid Vicious, and Arthur Miller. “The Chelsea in the Six­ties seemed to com­bine two atmos­pheres,” writes Miller in a 1978 essay on his time there. “A scary opti­mistic chaos which pre­dict­ed the hip future, and at the same time the feel of a mas­sive, old-fash­ioned, shel­ter­ing fam­i­ly. That at least was the myth one nursed in one’s mind, but like all myths it did not alto­geth­er stand inspec­tion.” That era more than arguably marked the Chelsea’s social and cul­tur­al hey­day.

A few years lat­er, in 1981, BBC’s arts doc­u­men­tary series Are­na made its way to New York to inves­ti­gate the his­to­ry and then-cur­rent state of this ver­i­ta­ble coun­ter­cul­ture incu­ba­tor. The film spends time with cur­rent Chelsea res­i­dents, for­mer Chelsea res­i­dents, and Chelsea habitués notable, cre­ative, and oth­er­wise — the notably cre­ative Andy Warhol, William Bur­roughs, and Quentin Crisp all make appear­ances. It also talks to the hotel’s staff and fol­lows a tour guide as he leads a curi­ous group through its sto­ried cor­ri­dors. “With all my mis­giv­ings about the Chelsea,” Miller reflects, “I can nev­er enter it with­out a cer­tain quick­en­ing of my heart­beat. There is an inde­scrib­ably home­like atmos­phere which at the same time lacks a cer­tain cred­i­bil­i­ty. It is some kind of fic­tion­al place, I used to think. As in dreams things are out front that are con­cealed in oth­er hotels.”

For more, you might want to spend time with “An Oral His­to­ry of the Chelsea Hotel: Where the Walls Still Talk,” which appeared in Van­i­ty Fair last Octo­ber.

Find the doc­u­men­tary above list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 625 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

Iggy Pop Con­ducts a Tour of New York’s Low­er East Side, Cir­ca 1993

Charles Bukows­ki Takes You on a Very Uncon­ven­tion­al Tour of Hol­ly­wood

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 Face­book.

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The Beatles Perform a Fun Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1964)

in Music, Television | January 6th, 2014

Before Bri­an Epstein dis­cov­ered The Bea­t­les in 1961, they looked noth­ing like the British mop-top mods of their ear­ly six­ties pop phase. As the Quar­ry­men, they aped the looks of Amer­i­can fifties rock­ers (see a slideshow in this fan-made video of “In Spite of All the Dan­ger”): Some­times they dressed like folk revival­ists in check­ered shirts and jeans, some­times like a Carl Perkins rock­a­bil­ly band in match­ing suits and skin­ny ties, and some­times like pom­padoured greasers straight out of West Side Sto­ry.

But even after the band acquired its dis­tinc­tive look and wrote a cache of orig­i­nal songs, they were still “com­pet­ing for increased expo­sure just like every­body else.” This meant numer­ous goofy pub­lic­i­ty stunts, every one of which they seemed to thor­ough­ly love. In one such affair, the four­some taped a tele­vi­sion spe­cial called “Around the Bea­t­les,” a ref­er­ence to the the­ater-in-the-round stu­dio set­up. In the first part of the pro­gram, they donned yet anoth­er cos­tume, Shake­speare­an dress, and staged a spoof of Act V, Scene I of A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream in hon­or of Shakespeare’s 400th anniver­sary. (See the orig­i­nal black-and-white BBC broad­cast from April 28, 1964 above. The show was broad­cast in Amer­i­ca on ABC that Novem­ber, in col­or.)

After some fan­fare, “Around the Bea­t­les” opens on Ringo, in hose and dou­blet, fir­ing a can­non. Then we get the oblig­a­tory hoard of scream­ing teenage fans singing the prais­es of each Bea­t­le and march­ing into the stu­dio with signs and ban­ners. After anoth­er trum­pet fan­fare, the play begins, and we’re off into slap­stick British com­e­dy, with a mug­ging Paul as Pyra­mus, sneer­ing John as This­be, smirk­ing George as Moon­shine, and a scene-chew­ing Ringo as Lion. The heck­lers in the box seats were script­ed, most­ly (one yells “go back to Liverpool!”—probably not a plant). Over­all the sil­ly skit con­firms what I’ve always main­tained: if the Bea­t­les’ hadn’t made it as musi­cians, they’d have done well to stay togeth­er as a com­e­dy troupe.

The sec­ond part of the spe­cial fea­tured musi­cal per­for­mances from sev­er­al oth­er acts and, of course, from the Bea­t­les them­selves. See the band bop along to a med­ley of “Love Me Do”/ “Please Please Me”/ “From Me to You”/ “She Loves You”/ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” above. They pre­re­cord­ed the music on April 19th and mimed the per­for­mances, as you can sure­ly tell from the total lack of ampli­fiers onstage. This was, as it is again, the way of things in pop music on tele­vi­sion. But if you are one of those who think The Bea­t­les didn’t put on a good live show, Col­in Flem­ing at The Atlantic begs to dif­fer, with a thor­ough expli­ca­tion of rare record­ings from an Octo­ber 1963 per­for­mance in Stock­holm.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les “A Hard Day’s Night” in Shake­speare­an Mode

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Find Shakespeare’s Col­lect­ed Works in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books Col­lec­tions

Down­load Shake­speare Cours­es from our Col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es

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

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Watch Laurence Olivier, Liv Ullmann and Christopher Plummer’s Classic Polaroid Ads

in Film, Photography, Technology, Television, Theatre | January 5th, 2014

Before Urban Out­fit­ters and Project Impos­si­ble, before the adorable bick­er­ing ubiq­ui­ty of spokes­peo­ple James Gar­ner and Mari­ette Hart­ley, Polaroid kept things classy by entrust­ing its rep­u­ta­tion to the most seri­ous of seri­ous actors.

Take Lau­rence Olivi­er. Who else could have made the phrase “Polaroid SX-70 Land Cam­era” sound like Shake­speare? Seri­ous­ly. He could’ve tacked the string of superla­tives he unleash­es against a black back­ground above onto the end of Hen­ry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech and I would have been none the wis­er.

(And gen­tle­men in Eng­land now a‑bed

Shall think them­selves accursed they were not here,

And hold their man­hoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day -

Pock­et sized, fold­ing, elec­tron­i­cal­ly con­trolled, motor dri­ven…)

Accord­ing to the late Peter Wens­berg, a for­mer Polaroid exec and author of Land’s Polaroid, A Com­pa­ny and the Man Who Invent­ed It, Sir Lau­rence agreed to the 1972 spot on the con­di­tion that it would­n’t be shown in Eng­land. (YouTube would­n’t be found­ed for anoth­er thir­ty years.)

Sir Lar­ry was fol­lowed in 1979 by actress Liv Ull­mann, solemn­ly prais­ing the  SX70 Sonar OneStep’s moment-cap­tur­ing abil­i­ties. Is there a Polaroid some­where in the Ing­mar Bergman Archive of his and Ull­man­n’s 12-year-old daugh­ter Linn, stand­ing at the sink, wash­ing dish­es? Or has YouTube become the sole reli­quary for these pre­cious moments?

Christo­pher Plum­mer’s 1980 spot seems down­right loose by con­trast, as he kicks back on a beach, aim­ing his SX70 Sonar OneStep at a Gold­en Retriev­er and a canoe’s worth of kids. (Sir Lar­ry’s sub­ject was a rather fussy porce­lain clock.)

Giv­en their his­to­ry, it’s easy to think of Polaroid’s instant cam­eras as a gim­mick or a fad, but such not­ed pho­tog­ra­phers as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Hel­mut New­ton, and Walk­er Evans were fans of the SX-70.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Amer­i­can Film­mak­ers in Japan­ese Ads: Quentin Taran­ti­no Sells Cell Phones, Orson Welles Hawks Whisky

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Ayun Hal­l­i­day has the sort of vision that screams out for an unlim­it­ed sup­ply of free dig­i­tal shots. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Milton Friedman & John Kenneth Galbraith’s Present Their Opposing Economic Philosophies on Two TV Series (1977–1980)

in Economics, Television | January 2nd, 2014

Do Mil­ton Fried­man and John Ken­neth Gal­braith debate in that great eco­nom­ics depart­ment in the sky? Both men died in 2006, after remark­ably long and dis­tin­guished careers as two of the most wide­ly read econ­o­mists of the 20th cen­tu­ry, yet I can only with great dif­fi­cul­ty imag­ine them ever agree­ing. Fried­man, founder of the free mar­ket-ori­ent­ed Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go “school” of eco­nom­ics, scru­ti­nized the world’s economies and found that a only min­i­mum of gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion makes for a max­i­mum of free­dom. The Cana­di­an-born Gal­braith, who served on Har­vard’s fac­ul­ty as well as under four U.S. Pres­i­dents, saw things dif­fer­ent­ly, believ­ing in the neces­si­ty of a strong state to ensure sta­bil­i­ty, effi­cien­cy, and equal­i­ty. Both spent a great deal of time and ener­gy com­mu­ni­cat­ing direct­ly with the pub­lic, not just with pop­u­lar books and com­men­taries on eco­nom­ic issues of the day, but with tele­vi­sion pro­grams too. You can watch Gal­braith’s The Age of Uncer­tain­ty, which first aired on the BBC in 1977, above. Fried­man’s “response” Free to Choose, broad­cast on PBS in 1980, appears below.

The fif­teen-episode Age of Uncer­tain­ty and the ten-episode Free to Choose both come down to the teach­ings of their star econ­o­mists; you might think of them as extend­ed lec­tures, with quite dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions, on the caus­es and effects of cap­i­tal­ism. But both expand upon this base of con­tent with rich imagery, from a vari­ety of cre­ative visu­al­iza­tions (up to and includ­ing his­tor­i­cal drama­ti­za­tion) of Gal­braith’s words to Fried­man’s trav­els far and wide, from his mon­ey-dri­ven birth­place of New York City to the “haven for peo­ple who sought to make the most of their own abil­i­ties” of Hong Kong in search of real exam­ples of the free mar­ket in action. The styles of dress may look dat­ed, but the pro­duc­tion val­ue holds up, and the eco­nom­ic issues dis­cussed have only grown more rel­e­vant with time. Whether you believe the gov­ern­ment should keep a help­ing hand on the econ­o­my or keep its grub­by mitts off it, both series have a wealth, as it were, of enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion in store for you. As bit­ter­ly as Gal­braithi­an sta­tists and Fried­man­ite lib­er­tar­i­ans may argue, sure­ly they can agree on the enjoy­a­bil­i­ty of qual­i­ty tele­vi­sion.

The Age of Uncer­tain­ty

  1. The Prophets and Promise of Clas­si­cal Cap­i­tal­ism
  2. The Man­ners and Morals of High Cap­i­tal­ism
  3. The Dis­sent of Karl Marx
  4. The Colo­nial Idea
  5. Lenin and the Great Unglu­ing
  6. The Rise and Fall of Mon­ey
  7. The Man­darin Rev­o­lu­tion
  8. The Fatal Com­pe­ti­tion
  9. The Big Cor­po­ra­tion
  10. Land and Peo­ple
  11. The Metrop­o­lis
  12. Democ­ra­cy, Lead­er­ship, Com­mit­ment
  13. Week­end in Ver­mont (part one, part two, part three)

Free to Choose

  1. The Pow­er of the Mar­ket
  2. The Tyran­ny of Con­trol
  3. Anato­my of a Cri­sis
  4. From Cra­dle to Grave
  5. Cre­at­ed Equal
  6. What’s Wrong with Our Schools?
  7. Who Pro­tects the Con­sumer?
  8. Who Pro­tects the Work­er?
  9. How to Cure Infla­tion
  10. How to Stay Free

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mil­ton Fried­man on Greed

The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry Explained with Comics, Start­ing with Adam Smith

An Intro­duc­tion to Great Econ­o­mists — Adam Smith, the Phys­iocrats & More — Pre­sent­ed in a Free Online Course

60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics: An Ani­mat­ed Intro to The Invis­i­ble Hand and Oth­er Eco­nom­ic Ideas

Eco­nom­ics: Free Online Cours­es

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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On the Air: Watch the 1950s Sitcom by David Lynch and His Twin Peaks Co-Creator Mark Frost

in Television | December 25th, 2013

In “David Lynch Keeps His Head” (uncut ver­sion here), David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s Pre­miere mag­a­zine report from the set of Lost High­way, Wal­lace rat­tles off the “enter­tain­ments David Lynch has cre­at­ed and/or direct­ed” includ­ing “Eraser­head (1978), The Ele­phant Man (1980), Dune (1984), Blue Vel­vet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990), two tele­vised sea­sons of Twin Peaks (1990–92), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and the mer­ci­ful­ly ablat­ed TV show On the Air (1992).” (To ablate, a verb Wal­lace uses again in the arti­cle in ref­er­ence to a sev­ered head, means “to remove or dis­si­pate by melt­ing, vapor­iza­tion, ero­sion, etc.”) Even Lynch die-hards may nev­er have caught a glimpse of On the Air, which Wal­lace lat­er describes as “bot­tom­less­ly hor­rid” and “eutha­na­tized by ABC after six very long-seem­ing weeks.” Clear­ly the author of Infi­nite Jest, despite great­ly respect­ing Lynch’s unprece­dent­ed­ly sur­re­al prime­time dra­ma Twin Peaks (its first sea­son, at least) and cred­it­ing Blue Vel­vet with reveal­ing to him the very pos­si­bil­i­ties of art, could­n’t stom­ach this show. Now you can watch all sev­en episodes of On the Air on Youtube, three of which aired in the Unit­ed States, and judge for your­self.

The series, which debuted and end­ed in the sum­mer of 1992, takes place in 1957, peer­ing behind the scenes at the fic­tion­al Zoblot­nick Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny, pro­duc­ers of the hap­less vari­ety pro­gram The Lester Guy Show. Lester Guy him­self, an alco­holic sil­ver-screen lead­ing man who rose to fame by stay­ing out of the Sec­ond World War, spends most episodes vying for pop­u­lar suprema­cy against his cast’s blonde ingenue Bet­ty Hud­son, who may remind you of an even sim­pler ver­sion of Sandy Williams, the Lau­ra Dern char­ac­ter in Blue Vel­vet. The series appeared as the sec­ond col­lab­o­ra­tion between Lynch and Mark Frost, co-cre­ator of Twin Peaks, which brought their sig­na­ture sen­si­bil­i­ty of intense vivid­ness and vague­ly haunt­ing unre­al­i­ty to the detec­tive genre. On the Air brings it to the clas­sic goof­ball sit­com. Watch the first episode (ranked as #57 on TV Guide’s “100 Great­est TV Episodes of All Time” list) and, to expe­ri­ence either the utter genius or the utter train­wreck, you’ll want to watch the fol­low­ing six. “There was a lot of laugh­ter on the set,” remem­bers Ian Buchanan, who played Lester Guy. “Maybe we were too hap­py. Every­body I knew on suc­cess­ful shows was mis­er­able.”

(日本人 Lynch-heads, take note: each episode includes Japan­ese sub­ti­tles.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

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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