The Life and Controversial Work of Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe Profiled in 1988 Documentary

in Photography, Television | March 18th, 2013

In March 1988, the BBC’s Are­na turned its lens toward pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Map­plethor­pe. The tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary series had already spent well over a decade cul­ti­vat­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for cov­er­ing every­thing—Super­man, Philip K. Dick, the fall­en Sovi­et empire, the Ford Cortina—but some view­ers must still have felt a bit star­tled by the choice of such a con­tro­ver­sial artist, let alone by how mild and non-threat­en­ing he ulti­mate­ly seems. Map­plethor­pe had made his name both in por­trai­ture, espe­cial­ly of musi­cians, and in high­ly charged erot­ic imagery. This lat­ter cur­rent in his work, did not, of course, please every­body. By the time the Are­na pro­file aired, Map­plethor­pe, suf­fer­ing from AIDS, would have only one year of life remain­ing, with the worst of the high-pro­file bat­tles over his artis­tic val­ue and/or “obscen­i­ty” still to come.

Though wary of extin­guish­ing the mys­tery of his pho­tographs by say­ing too much about them, Map­plethor­pe does reveal what sounds like an impor­tant ele­ment of his moti­va­tion, espe­cial­ly in the face of the obscen­i­ty charges: “I want­ed to retain the for­bid­den feel­ing of pornog­ra­phy and make an art state­ment, to make some­thing unique­ly my own.” We see the man at work, and we hear a good deal more from him in an on-cam­era inter­view. Nov­el­ist Edmund White appears to pro­vide con­text and com­men­tary, as do sev­er­al of the peo­ple Map­plethor­pe pho­tographed, both those who sought fame and those who oth­er­wise avoid­ed it. Cov­er­ing Map­plethor­pe’s life as much as it does his work, the broad­cast nat­u­ral­ly includes a con­ver­sa­tion with Pat­ti Smith, not­ed rock­er and per­haps the pho­tog­ra­pher’s clos­est friend. For ide­al sup­ple­men­tary read­ing, have a look at Smith’s Map­plethor­pe-cen­tric mem­oir Just Kids, about which we’ve post­ed before.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Remem­bers Robert Map­plethor­pe

Pat­ti Smith Reads Her Final Words to Robert Map­plethor­pe

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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Charlie Parker Plays with Dizzy Gillespie in the Only Footage Capturing the “Bird” in True Live Performance

in Music, Television | March 8th, 2013

Here’s a his­toric TV broad­cast of the found­ing fathers of bebop, Char­lie Park­er and Dizzy Gille­spie, play­ing togeth­er in 1952. It’s one of only two known sound films of Park­er playing–and the only one of him play­ing live, rather than synch­ing to a pre­re­cord­ed track.

The per­for­mance is from a Feb­ru­ary 24, 1952 broad­cast on the pio­neer­ing DuMont Tele­vi­sion Net­work. The full seg­ment begins with a brief cer­e­mo­ny in which Park­er and Gille­spie receive awards from Down Beat mag­a­zine, but the clip above cuts straight to the music: a per­for­mance of the bebop stan­dard “Hot House,” com­posed by Tad Dameron around the har­mon­ic struc­ture of Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love?.”

The quin­tet includes Park­er on alto sax­o­phone, Gille­spie on trum­pet, Sandy Block on bass, Char­lie Smith on drums and Dick Hyman on piano.

It was Hyman, who had played with Park­er and had his own night­ly show on the DuMont net­work, who helped orga­nize the appear­ance. In a 2010 inter­view with Jazz­Wax, Hyman talked about what it was like play­ing on the show with Park­er and Gille­spie. “It was togeth­er,” he said. “Those guys played with such a good time and feel. It’s a ter­rif­ic per­for­mance con­sid­er­ing it was a pop show with just two cam­eras.”

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:

Jean-Paul Sartre on How Amer­i­can Jazz Lets You Expe­ri­ence Exis­ten­tial­ist Free­dom & Tran­scen­dence

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

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

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

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Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking & Arthur C. Clarke Discuss God, the Universe, and Everything Else

in Astronomy, Science, Television | March 6th, 2013

Name the three fig­ures, liv­ing or dead, with whom you would most like to sit down to din­ner. Though per­haps a lit­tle tired, the chal­lenge still reveals some­thing worth know­ing about the respon­den­t’s per­son­al­i­ty. If I know the per­son­al­i­ties of Open Cul­ture read­ers at all, I’d wager that more than a few of you would choose to set places at the table for Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing, and Arthur C. Clarke. Any­one inter­est­ed in ask­ing the big, exis­ten­tial ques­tions and under­stand­ing the sci­ence under­neath them would have the time of their lives at such a meal, espe­cial­ly if astro­phys­i­cal­ly inclined. But until a genie grants you this wish, may we offer God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else?

Pre­sent­ed by Mag­nus Mag­nus­son, long­time host of the BBC’s Mas­ter­mind, this pro­gram brings the three togeth­er to dis­cuss “the Big Bang the­o­ry, God, our exis­tence as well as the pos­si­bil­i­ty of extrater­res­tri­al life.” Hawk­ing, of course, talks through his sig­na­ture speech syn­the­siz­er, and Sagan joins up through a satel­lite link — beamed through, yes, the very sort of float­ing mir­a­cles of engi­neer­ing that Clarke wrote about in his nov­els. With minds like these, you can rest assured that the con­ver­sa­tion won’t stray far from what Sagan calls “the fun­da­men­tal ques­tions,” nor will it come unteth­ered from estab­lished human knowl­edge and float into the realms of wild spec­u­la­tion and wish­ful think­ing. And of course, in such con­ver­sa­tions, a sense of humor like Hawk­ing’s — a man who, not expect­ed to reach age thir­ty, would nev­er­the­less live to see more advance­ment in human knowl­edge than any­one else on the broad­cast — nev­er goes amiss.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawk­ing Remixed

Watch Errol Mor­ris’ Trib­ute to Stephen Hawk­ing, A Brief His­to­ry of Time

Sev­en Ques­tions for Stephen Hawk­ing: What Would He Ask Albert Ein­stein & More

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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Watch The Twilight Zone’s Pilot Episode, Pitched by Rod Serling Himself (1959)

in Sci Fi, Television | March 4th, 2013

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Sure, cre­ators of tele­vi­sion’s dis­pos­able sit­coms and game shows have to sell their wares, and stren­u­ous­ly, to net­work exec­u­tives. But The Twi­light Zone? How could such an inno­v­a­tive, influ­en­tial tele­vi­su­al insti­tu­tion have ever need­ed to push its way past gate­keep­ers? Yet watch the series’ 1959 pilot above, and, before that even starts, you’ll see cre­ator Rod Ser­ling him­self make his pitch: “You gen­tle­men, of course, know how to push a prod­uct. My pres­ence here is for much the same pur­pose: sim­ply to push a prod­uct. To acquaint you with an enter­tain­ment prod­uct which we hope, and which we rather expect, would make your prod­uct-push­ing that much eas­i­er. What you’re about to see, gen­tle­men, is a series called The Twi­light Zone. We think it’s a rather spe­cial kind of series.” And how.

As the quin­tes­sen­tial late-night, black-and-white plunge into the spec­u­la­tive, the bizarre, the moral­is­tic, and the sim­ply eerie, The Twi­light Zone con­tin­ues to cap­ti­vate viewers—nowadays often, no doubt, YouTube viewers—born gen­er­a­tions after the end of its run. The pilot episode, “Where is Every­body?” sets the tone by fol­low­ing a lone, bewil­dered man through a mys­te­ri­ous­ly emp­ty town, seem­ing­ly aban­doned moments ago. But before that rolls, Ser­ling tan­ta­lizes the boss­es with descrip­tions of oth­er tales then in pro­duc­tion: a man stuck on an aster­oid with a robot, an immor­tal sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment, and a mil­que­toast mis­tak­en for the fastest gun in the old west. Not for noth­ing did Ser­ling build a rep­u­ta­tion as an auteur of human lone­li­ness. But that would come lat­er. “Mr. Ser­ling should not have much trou­ble in mak­ing his mark,” wrote the New York Times’ crit­ic when the show first aired. “At least his series promis­es to be dif­fer­ent.”

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:

Rod Ser­ling: Where Do Ideas Come From?

When Roald Dahl Host­ed His Own Creepy TV Show Way Out, a Com­pan­ion to Rod Serling’s Twi­light Zone (1961)

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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See Jimi Hendrix’s First TV Appearance, and His Last as a Backing Musician (1965)

in Music, Television | February 27th, 2013

After Jimi Hendrix’s dis­charge from the army, he earned his liv­ing as a trav­el­ing musi­cian on the so-called Chitlin’ Cir­cuit—the cir­cuit of venues through­out the seg­re­gat­ed South that booked black musi­cians. Hen­drix backed such giants of R&B, soul, and elec­tric blues as Wil­son Pick­ett and Sam Cooke, and dur­ing those ear­ly years with his own band the King Casu­als, the Nashville scene he’d set­tled into, and the cir­cuit gigs, he per­fect­ed the styl­is­tic quirks and stunts that would make him world famous just a few years later—playing right-hand­ed gui­tars upside down as a lefty, play­ing solos with his teeth and behind his head—often to the irri­ta­tion of his band­mates and employ­ers. He want­ed to do his own thing, but he paid his dues, jam­ming with and learn­ing from some of the top acts in ear­ly rock & roll while Eric Clap­ton and Kei­th Richards were lis­ten­ing to those same groups on the radio, painstak­ing­ly copy­ing their sound.

After near­ly two years on the cir­cuit, the rest­less and flam­boy­ant young Hen­drix, chaf­ing under the direc­tion of strict band­lead­ers, final­ly had enough of Ten­nessee and moved to Harlem to strike out on his own, but he still worked as a side­man: he record­ed with the Isley Broth­ers, toured with Lit­tle Richard, and in 1965, he made his first ever TV appear­ance with a pair of Long Island singers named Bud­dy and Sta­cy on Nashville’s Chan­nel 5 pro­gram Night Train, doing the Junior Walk­er & the All Stars top-ten hit “Shot­gun.” In the video above you can see Hen­drix (to the right of the drum­mer), groov­ing behind the fop­pish­ly-dressed vocal duo. Note how his moves are out of sync with the rest of the band, all right-hand­ed play­ers. Note how his pom­padour is slight­ly unkempt. Note, if you watch close­ly, his right hand trav­el­ing up and down the neck of his gui­tar, pulling off some killer runs—in a song that stays on one note for the duration—even while stuck behind the action.


This per­for­mance marks one of the last times Hen­drix would stand in the shad­ows of oth­er band­lead­ers. After work­ing steadi­ly in the stu­dio as a ses­sion play­er in 1966, he formed his own band, the Blue Flame (as Jim­my James), and took up res­i­dence at the his­toric Café Wha? in Green­wich Vil­lage (where my father saw him play, he tells me, and was floored, hav­ing no idea who the guy was). ’66 is the year Hen­drix ful­ly crossed over (some said sold out; some said sold his soul) from the soul/R&B cir­cuit to main­stream rock & roll suc­cess. He wouldn’t crack the U.S. until his leg­endary appear­ance at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val in June of 1967, but after form­ing the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence in late ’66, he wowed audi­ences in Europe with his first sin­gle “Hey Joe,” and appeared on UK TV shows Ready Steady Go! and Top of the Pops. Three months before Mon­terey, the band appeared on pop­u­lar Ger­man TV pro­gram Beat Club. Check out their per­for­mance above, doing “Hey Joe” and “Pur­ple Haze.” Hen­drix doesn’t set any fires, but he does get in a solo with his teeth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pre­vi­ous­ly Unre­leased Jimi Hen­drix Record­ing, “Some­where,” with Bud­dy Miles and Stephen Stills

‘Elec­tric Church’: The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence Live in Stock­holm, 1969

Hen­drix Plays Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Watch Huell Howser’s Decades of Television Travels Online. It’s California Gold!

in Television, Travel | February 21st, 2013

When tele­vi­sion broad­cast­er Huell Hows­er passed away last month, we South­ern Cal­i­for­ni­ans real­ized just how far his per­sona reached. The cliché “larg­er than life” seems, in this light, almost apt; it describes his famous­ly vol­u­ble enthu­si­asm, larg­er than the broad­ly local life he explored on cam­era. Though fol­low­ers iden­ti­fy Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Gold as Howser’s flag­ship series, he host­ed spe­cial­ized ones as well, such as Down­town, focus­ing on Los Ange­les’ his­toric core, Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Mis­sions (sub­ject obvi­ous), and Road Trip, which took him far­ther afield. Above, you’ll find an episode of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Gold shot in Palm Springs. Hows­er hap­pened to own a home out there, but more to the point, so did Frank Sina­tra; it’s the Chair­man of the Board­’s house that Hows­er devotes his con­sid­er­able curios­i­ty to walk­ing through and find­ing out every­thing about. Below, you can join him for a look at Vin­cent Price’s art col­lec­tion on a Vis­it­ing… broad­cast that con­tains an inter­view Hows­er record­ed with Price back in the eight­ies.

“I don’t have an agent,” said Hows­er in a 2009 Los Ange­les Times pro­file. “I don’t have a man­ag­er, I don’t have a press agent, I don’t have a wardrobe guy, a make­up guy, a park­ing space, a dress­ing room. It’s basi­cal­ly me and a cam­era­man and an edi­tor and a cou­ple of guys in the office. I can go out between now and noon and do a full 30-minute show just talk­ing to peo­ple on the street and have it on the air tonight.” You can watch all these shows on Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty’s new Huell Hows­er Archive; just click on a series title under the “Shows” col­umn, then through to each episode’s indi­vid­ual post. For a pub­lic tele­vi­sion icon, Hows­er had a pro­duc­tion sen­si­bil­i­ty ide­al­ly suit­ed for the inter­net, domain of the cheap and cheer­ful — well, domain of the cheap, any­way. “We have shrugged our way into a world where every­one is sup­posed to be a crit­ic of every­thing, all the time,” actor Thomas Lennon wrote in a remem­brance titled “Why Huell Hows­er Was the Oppo­site of the Inter­net.” “Huell, on the oth­er hand, would get into his car, dri­ve for hours, and show us things… just so he could tell us how won­der­ful they were.”

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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Beat Writer William S. Burroughs Spreads Counterculture Cool on Nike Sneakers, 1994

in Business, Literature, Television | February 14th, 2013

Nike footwear and celebri­ty ath­letes usu­al­ly go hand-in-hand. When you think Nike, you think of Michael Jor­dan, Bo Jack­son and Mia Hamm. And let’s not for­get the now trou­bled duo of Tiger Woods and Lance Arm­strong too. Fit, lithe bod­ies gen­er­al­ly sell sneak­ers, we know that.

But then there’s the bizarre, odd excep­tion. Let’s rewind the video­tape to 1994, when Nike enlist­ed William S. Bur­roughs to sell its Air Max shoes. That’s right a decrepit 79-year-old Beat writer, known for his hero­in addic­tion, manslaugh­ter con­vic­tion and cut up writ­ing. William S. Bur­roughs is pret­ty much the anti-Mia Hamm. And yet the ad works in its own way. Just like the Gap could use Jack Ker­ouac to lend hip­ster cred to its stodgy khakis, so Bur­roughs could bring a main­streamed coun­ter­cul­ture cool to Nike shoes as his head, appear­ing in a TV set pro­claims, “The pur­pose of tech­nol­o­gy is not to con­fuse the brain, but to serve the body, to make life eas­i­er, to make any­thing pos­si­ble. It’s the com­ing of the new tech­nol­o­gy.” That new tech­nol­o­gy being, I guess, the cut­ting edge cush­ions in Nike’s shoes?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

How Spike Lee Got His First Big Break: From She’s Got­ta Have It to That Icon­ic Air Jor­dan Ad

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky (find it also in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books)

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From the Annals of Optimism: The Newspaper Industry in 1981 Imagines its Digital Future

in Technology, Television | February 14th, 2013

“Imag­ine, if you will, sit­ting down to your morn­ing cof­fee, turn­ing on your home com­put­er to read the day’s news­pa­per.” A flam­boy­ant­ly spec­u­la­tive-sound­ing notion, no doubt, were you watch­ing this tele­vi­sion news broad­cast back when it aired in 1981. A pro­duc­tion of San Fran­cis­co’s KRON, the seg­ment takes a look at how the city’s news­pa­pers, dis­play­ing admirable far­sight­ed­ness, were then “invest­ing a lot of mon­ey to try and get a ser­vice just like that start­ed.” We see North Beach res­i­dent Richard Hal­lo­ran (he of  the immor­tal­ly meme-wor­thy onscreen iden­ti­fi­er, “Owns Home Com­put­er”) dial­ing, on his rotary tele­phone, “a local num­ber that will con­nect him with a com­put­er in Colum­bus, Ohio.” We also see the edi­tors of the San Fran­cis­co Exam­in­er “pro­gram­ming today’s copy of the paper into that same Ohio com­put­er.” Hal­lo­ran plops the phone’s receiv­er into his modem’s acoustic cou­pler, pre­sum­ably pours his morn­ing cof­fee, and down­loads the day’s paper — which takes two hours, at a cost of five dol­lars an hour.

“This is only the first step in news­pa­pers by com­put­er,” says KRON sci­ence reporter Steve New­man. “Engi­neers now pre­dict the day will come when we get all out news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines by home com­put­er.” We see footage of a tra­di­tion­al news­pa­per ven­dor: “But that’s a few years off, so for the moment, at least, this fel­low isn’t wor­ried about being out of a job.” That day came over a decade ago, and that fel­low sure­ly wor­ries now, as do the pub­lish­ers of his wares. We who start each day read­ing the news on our “home com­put­ers” laugh at the news­pa­per indus­try’s evi­dent hubris­tic self-destruc­tion by its fail­ure to under­stand the inter­net, much less engage with it. But this report shows us that cer­tain papers — the eight that Hal­lo­ran’s menu offered him, at least — seem­ing­ly had their eyes on the ball long before we did. Do we see here an indus­try sow­ing the seeds of its own inevitable destruc­tion, or evi­dence that things could have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Clay Shirky on the Demise of the News­pa­per

Wal­ter Cronkite Imag­ines the Home of the 21st Cen­tu­ry … Back in 1967

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

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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