Free Audio: Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad Star, Reads First Chapter of The Things They Carried

in Audio Books, Literature, Television | October 19th, 2013

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If you’re going through Break­ing Bad with­draw­al, here’s a small way to fill the void. Audible.com has made avail­able a record­ing of Bryan Cranston, the actor behind Wal­ter White, read­ing the first chap­ter from The Things They Car­ried, Tim O’Brien’s famous sto­ry col­lec­tion that offers a chill­ing, boots-on-the-ground por­tray­al of sol­diers’ expe­ri­ence dur­ing the Viet­nam War. A final­ist for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the Nation­al Book Crit­ics Cir­cle Award, the book has sold over 2 mil­lion copies world­wide and is now a sta­ple of col­lege and high school Eng­lish class­es across Amer­i­ca. Cranston’s read­ing runs over 47 min­utes.

Cranston actu­al­ly nar­rates the entire book, and if you’re inter­est­ed in down­load­ing it, there’s a way to do it for free. Just head over to Audible.com and reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al. You can down­load any audio book for free, includ­ing The Things They Car­ried. Then, when the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it, and still keep the audio book. The choice is  yours. And, in full dis­clo­sure, let me tell you that we have a nice arrange­ment with Audi­ble. When­ev­er some­one signs up for their amaz­ing ser­vice, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture. Get more infor­ma­tion on Audi­ble’s free tri­al here.

Also don’t miss our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. It’s a price­less resource.

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Patti Smith Sings “You Light Up My Life” with Composer Joe Brooks on 1979 Show Kids Are People Too

in Music, Television | October 17th, 2013

Maybe the Yo Gab­ba Gab­ba of its day, the Sun­day morn­ing kids’ show Kids are Peo­ple Too ran from 1978 to 1982, dur­ing which time it attract­ed such guests as Cheap Trick and KISS to its stu­dio. KISS was vir­tu­al­ly a car­toon already, and Cheap Trick def­i­nite­ly had its kid-friend­ly ele­ments, but one of the show’s musi­cal guests prob­a­bly did­n’t reach into a lot kids’ bed­rooms with her blas­phe­mous take on Van Morrison’s “Glo­ria,” her “Hey Joe / Piss Fac­to­ry,” or her spo­ken word open let­ter to Pat­ty Hearst. But the lengthy Q&A with Pat­ti Smith before she sings, with host Michael Young prompt­ing ques­tions from excit­ed audi­ence mem­bers, leaves me with the impres­sion that she was more pop­u­lar with Amer­i­ca’s youth than I thought.

Maybe it was her 1978 hit “Because the Night,” writ­ten by Bruce Spring­steen, that tempt­ed Kids are Peo­ple Too’s pro­duc­ers to invite Smith on the show to sing anoth­er cov­er, “You Light Up My Life,” with com­pos­er Joe Brooks. It’s a pret­ty weird moment in pop cul­ture his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the strange turns both musi­cians’ lives took. Smith went on to win a Nation­al Book Award and remains vital and cre­ative. Brooks went on to a very sor­did, igno­min­ious end. But here, they cross paths after Brooks won an Oscar for his song and Smith had recov­ered from a dis­as­trous fall from the stage and reboot­ed her career in a more pop direc­tion. Despite her greater mass appeal, Young still assumes that Pat­ti Smith means one thing. He even asks the kids in the stu­dio audi­ence, “didn’t you say Pat­ti Smith, punk rock, right?” The kids all yell back, “Yeah!” Hip kids or very effec­tive teleprompter? You be the judge.

*Note, an ear­li­er ver­sion of this post iden­ti­fied the host as Bob McAl­lis­ter and stat­ed that “Hearst went on to win a Nation­al Book Award.” As some read­ers have point­ed out, the host was Michael Young, and it was Smith, of course, not Pat­ty Hearst, who won the Nation­al Book Award in 2010.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Pat­ti Smith Give Two Dra­mat­ic Read­ings of Allen Ginsberg’s “Foot­note to Howl”

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

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

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

in Comedy, Television | October 10th, 2013

Sat­ur­day Night Live, now in its 39th sea­son, has become more notable late­ly for its takes on such unin­ten­tion­al­ly (and too often painful­ly) fun­ny polit­i­cal fig­ures as Sarah Palin and Michele Bach­mann, rather than for its actu­al sketch­es. The show’s had some rough years, and though I can’t count myself among its cur­rent fans, for per­haps an eight-year peri­od, from the late 80s to the mid 90s, I tried to catch every episode. Occa­sion­al­ly, I would have to endure what every fan of the long-run­ning show must bear: a long nos­tal­gic rant from my par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion about how ter­ri­ble the show had become and how it would nev­er be as fun­ny as it was in their day. But they may have just been right, since they watched it live in its infan­cy in the mid-sev­en­ties, when the show fea­tured such comedic giants as Dan Aykroyd, Steve Mar­tin, John Belushi, Bill Mur­ray, and Gil­da Rad­ner. Although the top­i­cal humor of those ear­ly episodes is bad­ly dat­ed, the raw ener­gy radi­at­ing from peo­ple who would go on to cre­ate such endur­ing clas­sics as Ani­mal House, The Blues Broth­ers, The Jerk, and Cad­dyshack sets the bar very high for every­one who fol­lowed.

Debut­ing on Octo­ber 11, 1975, the brain­child of Lorne Michaels and Dick Eber­sol was orig­i­nal­ly just called the show Sat­ur­day Night to dif­fer­en­ti­ate it from an ABC show called Sat­ur­day Night Live with Howard Cosell. But from its incep­tion, the hall­mark ele­ments were in place: the open­ing sketch end­ing in “Live from New York, it’s Sat­ur­day Night!” (orig­i­nal­ly uttered each time by Chevy Chase); the live stu­dio audi­ence; the celebri­ty guest host (pio­neered by George Car­lin in the first episode); and the live musi­cal guests (the first were Bil­ly Pre­ston and Janis Ian). The orig­i­nal cast con­sist­ed of Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Gar­rett Mor­ris, Gil­da Rad­ner, John Belushi, and Laraine New­man. In the video at the top you can see a very young Lorne Michaels intro­duce the eight orig­i­nal cast mem­bers before the first show aired in an inter­view on The Tomor­row Show with Tom Sny­der. Asked by Sny­der about the for­mat of the show, Michaels jok­ing­ly replies, “we’ve got eight, and we’re hop­ing for two to real­ly work. Not all of these peo­ple will become stars.” The cast laughs ner­vous­ly. There’s no way any of them could have known how much the show would func­tion as a star-mak­ing machine, but that is exact­ly what it became, even in its first sea­son.

We are lucky to have screen tests from two of the first cast’s biggest stars-to-be, John Belushi (above) and Dan Aykroyd (below). In his audi­tion, Belushi wag­gles his famous eye­brows, does a cou­ple of bril­liant Bran­do impres­sions, and gen­er­al­ly hams it up. Aykroyd plays it straight, engag­ing in the smart satire of cur­rent events and pop cul­ture that he did so well and pulling off a very cred­i­ble Louisiana accent.

While some of the most famous come­di­ans of sea­son one, includ­ing Belushi and Aykroyd, are well known even to the raw youth of today, Lorne Michael’s first hire, the fab­u­lous Gil­da Rad­ner, has sad­ly fad­ed from pop cul­ture mem­o­ry, and there are pre­cious few clips of her SNL work online. But Rad­ner was a sin­gu­lar artist whose stand-up rou­tines and Broad­way shows are absolute­ly phe­nom­e­nal, and still hold up today. You can see her below from her 1979 show “Gil­da Live” doing a char­ac­ter called Can­dy Slice, her take on Pat­ti Smith (who was nev­er so wast­ed, I think). Notice a young Paul Scha­ef­fer on the drums and SNL’s G.E. Smith, Radner’s first hus­band, on gui­tar. Radner’s trag­ic death from ovar­i­an can­cer in 1989 cast her late life in somber tones, but see­ing her below, before her ill­ness, offers but a glimpse of the tremen­dous phys­i­cal ener­gy and com­mit­ment she brought to her every mem­o­rable char­ac­ter on the show.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Tom Davis, Orig­i­nal Sat­ur­day Night Live Writer, “De-ani­mates” at 59

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

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The Stunt That Got Elvis Costello Banned From Saturday Night Live (1977)

in Music, Television | September 27th, 2013

One of the defin­ing moments in Elvis Costel­lo’s career hap­pened on Decem­ber 17, 1977, when he appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live. Costel­lo was 23 years old. His debut album, My Aim Is True, had just come out in Amer­i­ca a month ear­li­er. When the Sex Pis­tols were unable to appear on the show as planned (see their last live con­cert here), Costel­lo and his recent­ly formed band, the Attrac­tions, got their big break.

They were sup­posed to play his sin­gle “Less Than Zero,” a catchy tune about a loath­some politi­cian in Eng­land. But only a few bars into the song, Costel­lo put a stop to it. “I’m sor­ry, ladies and gen­tle­men,” he said, “but there’s no rea­son to do this song here.”

At that point he and the band launched into “Radio Radio,” a song that takes a jab at cor­po­rate-con­trolled broad­cast­ing. Sat­ur­day Night Live pro­duc­er Lorne Michaels was furi­ous. Accord­ing to some reports, he raised his mid­dle fin­ger at Costel­lo and kept it up until the unap­proved song was over. Costel­lo was banned from the show for near­ly 12 years. You can learn more about the inci­dent by watch­ing this video from the Dai­ly Guru:

The rift between Costel­lo and Michaels even­tu­al­ly healed, and Costel­lo was invit­ed to appear again on Sat­ur­day Night Live in the spring of 1989. Ten years after that, on SNL’s 25th anniver­sary show, Costel­lo went on the show again and par­o­died his noto­ri­ous 1977 appear­ance by burst­ing onstage while the Beast­ie Boys were play­ing “Sab­o­tage” and order­ing them to stop. He and the Boys then launched into a rau­cous ver­sion of “Radio Radio”:

In an inter­view this month with Details mag­a­zine, Costel­lo talks a lit­tle about the 1977 inci­dent. “They’ve run that clip for­ev­er,” he says, “and every time any­body does any­thing out­ra­geous on that show, I get name-checked. But I was copy­ing Jimi Hen­drix. Hen­drix had done the same thing on the Lulu Show, when he went into an unsched­uled num­ber. I remem­ber see­ing it and going, ‘What the hel­l’s going on?’ ” To see for your­self what Costel­lo is talk­ing about, vis­it our post, Jimi Hen­drix Wreaks Hav­oc on the Lulu Show, Gets Banned From BBC.

Also see: 5 Musi­cal Guests Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live: From Sinead O’Con­nor to Frank Zap­pa

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Elvis Costel­lo Sings “Pen­ny Lane” for Sir Paul McCart­ney

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

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The Science of Breaking Bad: Professor Donna Nelson Explains How the Show Gets it Right

in Science, Television | September 24th, 2013

There’s noth­ing fun­ny about the rav­ages of high­ly addic­tive nar­cotics or gang­land turf wars. Nev­er­the­less, Vince Gilligan’s riv­et­ing hit Break­ing Bad man­aged to start on a (yes, dark­ly) com­ic note that still sounds occa­sion­al­ly as the show hur­tles toward its fate­ful con­clu­sion this Sun­day. (Conan O’Brien has had a lot of fun with these moments in par­o­dies of the show’s char­ac­ters’ quirks and its some­times-grue­some desert absur­di­ties.)

What anchors the show, even when it veers into gal­lows humor, is its sense of authen­tic­i­ty. Despite Break­ing Bad’s theatrical—almost Shakespearean—plotting, Gilli­gan and his writ­ers have tak­en care to build a very believ­able scaf­fold­ing behind every out­ra­geous set piece, even when it comes to the sci­ence of per­fec­tion­is­tic chem­istry teacher Wal­ter White’s super high-qual­i­ty crys­tal metham­phet­a­mine. In order to get the sci­ence right, Gilli­gan approached Don­na Nel­son, Pro­fes­sor of Organ­ic Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa.

Nel­son doesn’t only con­sult on the nature of illic­it chem­i­cal com­pounds; she has also pro­vid­ed the show’s writ­ers with insights into the moti­va­tions and meth­ods of chemists and teach­ers. As Nel­son says, “to us who are edu­cat­ed in sci­ence, when­ev­er we see sci­ence pre­sent­ed inac­cu­rate­ly, it’s like fin­ger­nails on a black­board. It just dri­ves us crazy, and we can’t stay immersed in the show.” As a Break­ing Bad fan who is, I’ll be hon­est, large­ly chem­istry-illit­er­ate, I’d still cred­it some of my immer­sion to how real the sci­ence feels, a by-prod­uct, sure­ly, of how gen­uine it is. Watch Pro­fes­sor Nel­son in the video above, pro­duced by the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, explain how the show cre­at­ed its illu­sions with the stuff of 100% real sci­ence.

Well, okay, it’s maybe more like 96%. As you might have sus­pect­ed, the sig­na­ture pow­der blue col­or of Walter’s prod­uct is pure dra­mat­ic inven­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Orig­i­nal Audi­tion Tapes for Break­ing Bad Before the Final Sea­son Debuts

The Break­ing Bad Theme Played with Meth Lab Equip­ment

Inside Break­ing Bad: Watch Conan O’Brien’s Extend­ed Inter­view with the Show’s Cast and Cre­ator

Down­load Free Online Chem­istry Cours­es

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

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The Irrepressible Bette Davis Recalls Her Good and Bad Days Kissing in the Movies

in Film, Life, Television | September 17th, 2013

In 1971, a year before Last Tan­go in Paris was released in the US,  Bette Davis went on The Dick Cavett Show to dish on a career’s worth of onscreen kiss­es. Four decades on, when access to Net­flix is all that’s required to enjoy a visu­al inti­ma­cy bor­der­ing on the gyne­co­log­i­cal with Halle Berry or Maria Bel­lo, Davis still cap­ti­vates. Watch the above excerpt and don’t feel ashamed if you spend the rest of the day try­ing to guess the iden­ti­ty of the actor who—in Cavet­t’s words—“was so repul­sive that you just could­n’t stand to do it.”

Glenn Ford? Paul Hein­reid? Pop­u­lar opin­ion points to Edward G. Robin­son.

Who­ev­er he was, she cashed her pay­check and took one for the team, just as she did in 1930, when under con­tract to Uni­ver­sal, the self-described “Yan­kee-ist, mod­est vir­gin that ever walked the earth” was pressed into ser­vice as a “test girl.” This involved lying on a couch as a suc­ces­sion of 15 audi­tion­ing actors demon­strat­ed their pas­sion­ate kiss­ing abil­i­ties.

That ses­sion was filmed, but evi­dence has yet to sur­face on the Inter­net. Fans will just have to con­tent them­selves with sneak­ing onto a three-acre pri­vate arbore­tum in Mass­a­chu­setts for a glimpse of an Anna Col­man Ladd foun­tain fea­tur­ing four frol­ic­some nudes. Word has it a cer­tain mod­est vir­gin Yan­kee served as the mod­el for one of these fig­ures while still in her teens. Or so a leg­endary actress revealed to Play­boy at the age of 74.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Woody Allen on The Dick Cavett Show Cir­ca 1970

Dick Cavett’s Wide-Rang­ing TV Inter­view with Ing­mar Bergman and Lead Actress Bibi Ander­s­son (1971)

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day recalls Lau­ren Bacall shilling for a lip aug­men­ta­tion pro­ce­dure in No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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New Archive Makes Available 800,000 Pages Documenting the History of Film, Television & Radio

in Archives, Film, History, Internet Archive, Media, Radio, Television | August 27th, 2013

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Click images for larg­er ver­sions

Film buffs and schol­ars have a new cache at their fin­ger­tips. The Media His­to­ry Dig­i­tal Library has made hun­dreds of thou­sands of pages of film and broad­cast­ing his­to­ry avail­able in a search­able dig­i­tal archive they’ve called Lantern, an open access, inter­ac­tive library.

With help from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, Madi­son Depart­ment of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Arts, MHDL made their entire col­lec­tion of Busi­ness Screen, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, Pho­to­play and Vari­ety—among oth­er magazines—available for text search­es for the first time.

In 2011 a group of film schol­ars devel­oped MHDL, an updat­ed resource for his­to­ri­ans used to read­ing through micro­film archives of cin­e­ma and broad­cast jour­nals. At the time, their archive was a gold­mine, pulling togeth­er the boun­ty of print­ed mate­r­i­al chron­i­cling the film indus­try. Now they’ve made it bet­ter, with more refined search, fil­ter­ing and sort­ing tools. Plus you can down­load images and texts.

It may have been a rite of pas­sage for film stu­dents to sequester them­selves in a dark library car­rel and scroll through micro­fiche reels of Mov­ing Pic­ture World, an influ­en­tial trade jour­nal until 1927, but Lantern brings ven­er­a­ble movie mag­a­zines dat­ing up to the ear­ly ’70s into the light of day where any­one can access the images and arti­cles of major trade and fan mag­a­zines, free of charge.

An ear­ly on-set chat rag, Film Fun, a mag­a­zine about “the hap­py side of the movies,” brought read­ers “inti­mate gos­sip of the pro­fes­sion told by the actors and actress­es ‘between the reels.’” The images are gor­geous.

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In the twen­ties a new ama­teur movie mak­ing indus­try thrived, with equip­ment and even tour pack­ages avail­able for buffs who want­ed to tour exot­ic locales like Cuba with cam­eras and learn to shoot and pre­serve 16 mm motion pic­tures. A boom in DIY film mag­a­zines like Ama­teur Movie Mak­ers tar­get­ed the ear­ly adopters.

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And lest we think that pulp celebri­ty mags like Peo­ple and Us are low­er brow than those of yes­ter­year, we should think again. I’m not sure about you, but I’m not sure four-times-mar­ried Bette Davis makes the best love advice colum­nist. But appar­ent­ly Pho­to­play mag­a­zine did.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three Great Films Star­ring Char­lie Chap­lin, the True Icon of Silent Com­e­dy

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Vis­it her web­site and fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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Dick Cavett’s Wide-Ranging TV Interview with Ingmar Bergman and Lead Actress Bibi Andersson (1971)

in Film, Television | August 21st, 2013

Many film fans wish we could have a direc­tor like Ing­mar Bergman work­ing today. Just as many tele­vi­sion fans sure­ly wish we could have a talk show host like Dick Cavett work­ing today. But both Bergman, who died in 2007, and Cavett, who still writes but seems to have put tele­vi­su­al pur­suits behind him, pro­duced sub­stan­tial bod­ies of work. And, thanks to the inter­net, you can expe­ri­ence their films and broad­casts even more eas­i­ly than when they first appeared. Take, for instance, this 1971 Dick Cavett Show episode fea­tur­ing the curi­ous and dry-wit­ted con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist’s inter­view with the Swedish mak­er of such pic­tures still viewed wide­ly and enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly as The Sev­enth Seal, The Vir­gin Spring, Per­sona, and Fanny and Alexan­der. No enthu­si­ast of seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion about film would want to miss the hour when these two men’s worlds col­lide. But we get an insight into more than these men’s worlds: part­way through the episode, and to the delight of Bergman’s fans, actress Bibi Ander­s­son turns up.

Even­tu­al­ly to star in more than ten Bergman pic­tures, includ­ing Per­sona, The Magi­cian, and The Pas­sion of Anna, Ander­s­son appears osten­si­bly in pro­mo­tion of her and Bergman’s then-most recent col­lab­o­ra­tion, The Touch. “Does he under­stand women?” Cavett sud­den­ly asks Ander­s­son, who replies with every inter­view­er’s bête noire, the one-word answer: “Yes.” Bergman then explains his con­vic­tion that women pos­sess greater nat­ur­al act­ing abil­i­ty and com­fort with the craft than men do. “Act­ing,” he says, “is a very spe­cial wom­an’s pro­fes­sion.” The full con­ver­sa­tion reveals more about the film­mak­er’s sur­pris­ing fem­i­nism, as well as his child­hood fear of movies, his life­long fear of drugs, his views on punc­tu­al­i­ty, his on-set tem­per, his strug­gles with rest­less leg syn­drome, the pride he takes in his soap com­mer­cials, his home­land’s sup­posed pre­pon­der­ance of beau­ti­ful women, and how many more films he intends to make. “Five, maybe six,” the direc­tor guess­es. “Make it six, could you?” asks the host. He end­ed up mak­ing twelve.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

How Woody Allen Dis­cov­ered Ing­mar Bergman, and How You Can Too

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

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

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