Johnny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

in Music, Television | November 26th, 2012

Recent­ly we fea­tured a video of Neil Young per­form­ing on The John­ny Cash Show in 1971. Today we bring you anoth­er extra­or­di­nary moment from the very same episode: John­ny Cash intro­duc­ing his now-clas­sic song, “Man in Black.”

It’s from a spe­cial called “John­ny Cash on Cam­pus” which aired on Feb­ru­ary 17, 1971. The per­for­mance was taped in front of an all-stu­dent audi­ence at the Ryman Audi­to­ri­um in down­town Nashville. A few days ear­li­er Cash had trav­eled across town to vis­it stu­dents on the cam­pus of Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty and, as he explains here in the intro­duc­tion, an idea began brew­ing.

1971 was a time of wide­spread stu­dent protests over the Viet­nam War and oth­er issues. The Kent State shoot­ings had hap­pened the year before. As a protest song, “Man in Black” shows Cash’s abil­i­ty to reach across gen­er­a­tions and appeal to audi­ences much wider than those usu­al­ly afford­ed to coun­try music.

When Cash first played the song at Ryman Audi­to­ri­um it was so new he need­ed cue cards to fol­low the words. The video offers a rare glimpse of an artist try­ing out a major work when the paint was still wet.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

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The Coen Brothers Make a TV Commercial — Ridiculing “Clean Coal”

in Comedy, Film, Technology, Television | November 26th, 2012

When famous movie direc­tors shoot tele­vi­sion spots, they usu­al­ly focus on the mer­its of a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct: Wim Wen­ders and Stel­la Artois, Wes Ander­son and the Hyundai Azera, Jean-Luc Godard and Schick after­shave. Above, you’ll see one by Joel and Ethan Coen meant not to endorse but to oppose. Premised on the notion that the name “clean coal” masks a not-espe­cial­ly-clean tech­nol­o­gy, “Clean Coal Clean” dish­es it out against the coal indus­try — “the most trust­ed name in coal” — with a satir­i­cal pas­tiche of house­hold clean­ing spray com­mer­cials. I’ll say this: if any pair of film­mak­ers can get me to watch a video about the pol­i­tics of coal, the guys behind Rais­ing Ari­zona, Bar­ton Fink, and A Seri­ous Man can. The clip just below offers a look into the pro­duc­tion of anoth­er “Clean Coal Clean” par­o­dy com­mer­cial, and a rare chance to see the Coen broth­ers at work.

Mar­la Dick­er­son in the Los Ange­les Times pro­vides back­ground on this “lat­est sal­vo in the media bat­tle between the coal indus­try and envi­ron­men­tal­ists over the role that car­bon fuels should play in the Unit­ed States’ ener­gy future.” Dick­er­son quotes a coal spokesman on how the “the indus­try spent more than $50 bil­lion since the 1970s installing pol­lu­tion-con­trol equip­ment and design­ing plants that are more effi­cient.” She also lays out the envi­ron­men­tal­ists’ argu­ment: “the coal indus­try’s mar­ket­ing cam­paign has left Amer­i­cans with the impres­sion that such ‘clean coal” tech­nol­o­gy already exists. Such a break­through has yet to be devel­oped,” she quotes the Sier­ra Cub’s coal cam­paign direc­tor as say­ing, “and may nev­er be at a cost that makes eco­nom­ic sense.” Of course, not even a genius auteur — not even two of them — can make up your mind on this issue. But with these spots, the Coen broth­ers and the Alliance for Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion reit­er­ate an invalu­able point: whether about house­hold clean­ers or ener­gy sources, nev­er believe the hype.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Louis CK Plays Abraham Lincoln, America’s 16th President and (Yes) Stand-Up Comedian Too

in Comedy, History, Television | November 16th, 2012

Abra­ham Lin­coln fret­ted over the tim­ing of eman­ci­pa­tion, Gen­er­al George McClel­lan’s reluc­tance to take deci­sive action, North-South reuni­fi­ca­tion, and his wife’s men­tal insta­bil­i­ty.

Louis CK wor­ries about sex, his kids, and the decline of his flab­by, mid­dle-aged body.

The ten­den­cy to dwell on weighty mat­ters makes CK a fit­ting choice to embody our 16th pres­i­dent  on the small screen. (A dis­tinc­tion shared by such lumi­nar­ies as Lance Hen­rik­sen and Sam Water­ston, though not at the behest of Sat­ur­day Night Live). Movie star Daniel Day-Lewis’ cur­rent­ly run­ning por­tray­al may net him a Best Actor Triple Crown come awards sea­son, but CK’s the one who takes Abe to anoth­er dimen­sion, tai­lor­ing the Great Empan­ci­pa­tor to fit the estab­lished tem­plate of his own crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed sit­com.

His­to­ry comes alive in a whole new way as the stovepipe-hat­ted, pudgi­er-than-nor­mal Lin­coln trudges up from the sub­way, chok­ing down an anony­mous West Vil­lage slice to get him through a set at the Com­e­dy Cel­lar. Abe’s rou­tine on slave own­er­ship has def­i­nite echoes of Louis’ Sea­son One mus­ings on bes­tial­i­ty, a there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go‑I flir­ta­tion res­cued by pro­fan­i­ty-laced moral out­rage.

No dis­re­spect to Day-Lewis’ First Lady Sal­ly Field, but there’s sim­i­lar fresh­ness to be found in Sat­ur­day Night Live reg­u­lar Aidy Bryant’s inter­pre­ta­tion of Mary Todd Lin­coln. Par­tic­u­lar­ly  when one fac­tors in a Direc­tor’s Cut that restores the pet­ti­coat peel­ing mate­r­i­al cut from the late night broad­cast.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

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‘The Needle and the Damage Done’: Neil Young Plays on The Johnny Cash Show, 1971

in Music, Television | November 13th, 2012

Here’s a scene from a clas­sic episode of The John­ny Cash Show, with Neil Young singing a deeply per­son­al song that he had only recent­ly writ­ten.

“John­ny Cash on Cam­pus” was a spe­cial edi­tion that aired on Feb­ru­ary 17, 1971.  Cash and his crew vis­it­ed Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty in Nashville to talk with stu­dents. In the pro­gram, one of them rais­es the sub­ject of drugs in the music indus­try, and Cash speaks briefly about his own prob­lem with drugs before intro­duc­ing Young, who sings “The Nee­dle and the Dam­age Done” in front of an all-stu­dent audi­ence at the Ryman Audi­to­ri­um. Young then puts down his gui­tar and moves to a piano to play “Jour­ney Through the Past.”

It was a busy time for Young. While he was in Nashville to appear on the show he was per­suad­ed by a local record pro­duc­er to record his next album there. He began work almost imme­di­ate­ly on what would become his mas­ter­piece, Har­vest. On the night of the John­ny Cash Show Young invit­ed two oth­er guests that night, Lin­da Ron­stadt and James Tay­lor, to go back to the stu­dio with him after­ward. Togeth­er the three sang the back­ing vocals on “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man,” and Tay­lor played the dis­tinc­tive ban­jo gui­tar part on “Old Man.”

The Feb­ru­ary 17, 1971 episode of The John­ny Cash Show is also notable for being the first time Cash per­formed “Man in Black.” He got the idea for the song from his dis­cus­sions with the stu­dents at Van­der­bilt, and fin­ished writ­ing the lyrics on the day of the show. The song was so new he need­ed cue cards to sing the words.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

Neil Young Reveals the New Killer Gad­get That Will Save Music

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Meryl Streep Shrooms Her Way Through Modern Alice in Wonderland

in Literature, Poetry, Television, Theatre, Video - Arts & Culture | November 12th, 2012

Beware the Jub­jub bird…

Beware post-70s the­atri­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion…

Beware a chil­dren’s clas­sic — Alice in Won­der­land, in a mod­ern musi­cal update …

Beware a grown woman cast as a lit­tle girl…

On the oth­er hand, what if we’re talk­ing about Meryl Streep? Specif­i­cal­ly the Deer Hunter / Kramer vs. Kramer-era Streep, star­ring in Alice in Con­cert, play­wright Eliz­a­beth Swa­dos and direc­tor Joe Pap­p’s 1981 adap­ta­tion of Lewis Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal trip­py tale. If Alice at the Palace, a slight­ly restaged for tele­vi­sion ver­sion, is any evi­dence, Amer­i­ca’s Most Seri­ous Actress had a blast, bound­ing around in bag­gy over­alls, doing every­thing in her con­sid­er­able pow­er to upend the pris­sy pinafore-sport­ing Dis­ney stan­dard. She jigged. She pout­ed. She slew the Jab­ber­wock and almost imme­di­ate­ly regret­ted it.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, giv­en the con­text, she also got to play stoned. Her spacey mean­der­ings ush­ered in the most fan­tas­ti­cal­ly para­noid inter­pre­ta­tion of the Jab­ber­wocky you’re ever like­ly to hear, cour­tesy of a sup­port­ing ensem­ble that includ­ed Mark Linn-Bak­er and the late Michael Jeter. Sud­den­ly, that which has long proved mad­den­ing starts to make sense.

It’s  a feat all around.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pho­to: The Real Alice in Won­der­land Cir­ca 1862

Alice in Won­der­land: The 1903 Orig­i­nal Film

Lewis Car­rol­l’s Alice in Won­der­land avail­able in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

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Nicolas Cage, Paul Newman & Dennis Hopper Bring Their American Style to Japanese Commercials

in Television | November 7th, 2012

West­ern­ers who grew inter­est­ed in Japan dur­ing the past 30 years will remem­ber one point of ear­ly con­tact with the cul­ture: Japan­ese com­mer­cials. Tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments from the Land of the Ris­ing Sun have long offered the rest of the world a source of uncom­pre­hend­ing aston­ish­ment and mys­ti­fied laugh­ter. What a weird place Japan is, many must think to them­selves as they gaze upon spots involv­ing danc­ing dogs and salty snacks or brush fire and high blood-pres­sure tea. But as for­eign observers tend to dis­cov­er — and as I have had recon­firmed while vis­it­ing the coun­try for the past week — Japan may have many qual­i­ties, but pure weird­ness isn’t among them. Arti­facts that strike the rest of us as weird emerge accord­ing to log­ic, albeit a log­ic of their own. This goes dou­ble for the most prized Japan­ese com­mer­cials of the bunch: those star­ring Amer­i­can celebri­ties.

Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve fea­tured Woody Allen for Seibu and James Brown for Nissin. Please enjoy, at the very top of this post, the eccen­tric Nico­las Cage play­ing his Amer­i­can-ness to the very hilt. When pachinko machine man­u­fac­tur­er Sankyo recruit­ed Cage, they went all-out, get­ting him square-danc­ing in the mid­dle of a lone­ly south­west­ern high­way with a pack of met­al ball-head­ed aliens. Right above, we have Paul New­man flash­ing a smile and point­ing his fin­ger not once, but two times, in a 1980 com­mer­cial for Maxwell House. And speak­ing of eccen­tric­i­ty, below you’ll find per­haps the most oblique exam­ple of the Amer­i­can actor-star­ring Japan­ese com­mer­cial I’ve ever come across: Den­nis Hop­per for Tsumu­ra. Sofia Cop­po­la sat­i­rized all of this, of course, in Lost in Trans­la­tion, but the exchange of Japan­ese cor­po­rate mon­ey for a dose of dev­il-may-care Amer­i­can panache could hard­ly make bet­ter busi­ness sense.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Making The Planet of the Apes: Roddy McDowall’s Home Movies and a 1966 Makeup Test

in Film, Television | November 5th, 2012

By most accounts, when Rod­dy McDowall appeared on The Car­ol Bur­nett Show in full Plan­et of the Apes make­up, the host was gen­uine­ly fright­ened, a tes­ta­ment to the extra­or­di­nary work of leg­endary, Oscar-win­ning make­up artist John Cham­bers (who as Ben Affleck’s new film Argo reveals, also did work for the CIA). The hand­some char­ac­ter-actor McDowall spent a good por­tion of his film career in make­up, most mem­o­rably as the char­ac­ters Cor­nelius, Cae­sar, and Galen (on the 1974 TV show) of the Plan­et of the Apes series. A home movie buff and pho­tog­ra­ph­er, McDowall doc­u­ment­ed the lengthy process of his Apes’ make­up (above), applied here by artist Don Cash and his assis­tants. Shot and edit­ed by McDowall, and set to excerpts from the dra­mat­ic Jer­ry Gold­smith Apes score, the film also includes a quick shot of Mau­rice Evans in the first minute, game­ly smok­ing a cig­a­rette in full Dr. Zaius make­up.

The Plan­et of the Apes fran­chise is one of the most suc­cess­ful and long-run­ning sci-fi series of all time. Adapt­ed from a 1963 nov­el by French writer Pierre Boulle, the orig­i­nal 1968 film spawned four sequels, Tim Burton’s 2001 remake, the 2011 pre­quel Rise of the Plan­et of the Apes, and its sequel, the upcom­ing Dawn of the Plan­et of the Apes, slat­ed for the spring of 2014. Then, of course, there’s a world of mer­chan­dise, com­ic books, and a car­toon series. The longevi­ty of the series is due in no small part to Chamber’s remark­ably durable visu­al real­iza­tion of Boulle’s premise. How­ev­er, few peo­ple know how much dif­fer­ent the film might have looked had it stayed true to the aes­thet­ic of a 1966 stu­dio pitch/makeup test. In the video right above, set up in the first few min­utes with hand-drawn stills and voice-over nar­ra­tion, Charleton Hes­ton plays Thomas (lat­er changed to Tay­lor), Edward G. Robin­son is Dr. Zaius, James Brolin is Cor­nelius and Lin­da Har­ri­son is Zira (lat­er played by Kim Hunter). This film shows a much more advanced, sci­en­tif­ic ape soci­ety than the result­ing first film, lim­it­ed by bud­get con­cerns, would be able to.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Universal Myth

in Film, Television | November 1st, 2012

Some of Star Wars’ detrac­tors call the series schlocky, blunt, pre­dictable, and implau­si­ble even by fan­ta­sy’s stan­dards. A defend­er might respond that they’re look­ing at it all wrong: to appre­ci­ate Star Wars, you need to watch it as an epic myth. George Lucas him­self, who has more or less mount­ed this argu­ment in response to charges of unsub­tle­ty, rarely seems far from drop­ping the phrase “the pow­er of myth.” That, sure­ly not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, is also the title of a 1988 Bill Moy­ers tele­vi­sion series on mythol­o­gist Joseph Camp­bell and his ideas about myth through time and across human cul­tures. Moy­ers and Camp­bell actu­al­ly con­duct­ed their first five episodes’ worth of con­ver­sa­tions at Lucas’ Sky­walk­er Ranch. Just as Lucas did his read­ing of Camp­bell, Camp­bell did his read­ing of Star Wars: in the brief clip from The Pow­er of Myth above, the schol­ar express­es his enthu­si­asm for the films’ use of mytho­log­i­cal ele­ments drawn from across the world. (Find the com­plete Pow­er of Myth series on DVD here.)

If you want to know about myth, Camp­bell remains the go-to guy. You can hear more from him on the Joseph Camp­bell Foun­da­tion’s YouTube chan­nel, which fea­tures clips of Camp­bell on the mythol­o­gy of the trick­ster, on myth as mir­ror for the ego, and, of course, on cir­cum­ci­sion. Though obvi­ous­ly not as exten­sive as the afore­men­tioned in-depth six-hour sit-down between Camp­bell and Moy­ers, they’ll still give you a sense of why Camp­bel­l’s obser­va­tions about the eter­nal rel­e­vance of the strongest myths have them­selves stayed so rel­e­vant a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry after his pass­ing. Applic­a­ble essay ques­tion: to what extent can we put the rel­a­tive lack of enthu­si­asm for the new­er Star Wars pre­quels down to George Lucas not hav­ing cracked his copy of The Hero With a Thou­sand Faces in a while?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Star Wars as Silent Film

The Exis­ten­tial Star Wars: Sartre Meets Darth Vad­er

Star Wars is a Remix

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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