Eisenhower Answers America: The First Political Advertisements on American TV (1952)

in Politics, Television | September 28th, 2012

Going into the 1952 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the Democ­rats had held the White House for near­ly twen­ty years. FDR took office in 1933, begin­ning the first of twelve years in office. Then Har­ry S. Tru­man led the nation for near­ly anoth­er eight years. Dur­ing that time, Amer­i­ca endured a lot. War, eco­nom­ic depres­sion, and more war — some hot, some cold. By the time the 1950s rolled around, Amer­i­cans were tired and ready for a change.

In the 1952 elec­tion, we find Adlai Steven­son, the reluc­tant Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date, squar­ing off against Dwight D. Eisen­how­er, the war hero who had led Amer­i­can troops to vic­to­ry in Europe, instant­ly becom­ing the “most admired liv­ing Amer­i­can” (accord­ing to opin­ion polls). Eisen­how­er, it turns out, knew how to win elec­tions as well as wars. In ’52, Ike aired the first ad cam­paigns on tele­vi­sion. Called Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca, the ads fea­tured “every­day” Amer­i­cans ask­ing ques­tions about the issues of the day — the war in Korea, infla­tion, high tax­es, etc. PBS has a well-researched intro­duc­tion to this inno­va­tion in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, while the nice­ly-curat­ed web site, The Liv­ing Room Can­di­date, offers a rich col­lec­tion of cam­paign com­mer­cials aired between 1952 and 2008.

You can watch a playlist of ads from the Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca cam­paign below.

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Samuel L. Jackson Stars in “Wake the F**ck Up for Obama,” a NSFW Political Children’s Tale

in Comedy, Law, Politics, Television | September 27th, 2012

Last sum­mer, Samuel L. Jack­son delight­ed lis­ten­ers when he nar­rat­ed the audio ver­sion of Adam Mans­bach’s twist­ed lit­tle chil­dren’s bed­time sto­ry, Go the F**k to Sleep. Now, Jack­son returns with Wake the F**ck Up for Oba­ma. Accord­ing to the New York Post (if they say it, it must be true!), Mans­bach wrote the Dr. Seuss­ian script for the polit­i­cal ad. And it was appar­ent­ly fund­ed by the Jew­ish Coun­cil for Research and Edu­ca­tion, a lib­er­al super PAC fund­ed by George Soros’ 25-year-old son. Until today, I thought that Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, the SCOTUS deci­sion that unleashed a tor­rent of Super PAC ads on our air­waves, did more to under­mine Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy than any for­eign threat. But when the video hit the 2:44 mark, you start to have your doubts.

via Gal­ley Cat

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

in Comedy, Television | September 24th, 2012

As Sea­son 3 of Louie winds to a close, we find things look­ing up for the hap­less Louis CK. The head of CBS invites Louie to his office and gives him a career-defin­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty, the chance to take over the Late Show from a retir­ing David Let­ter­man. But that is all pred­i­cat­ed on one thing — the schlumpy come­di­an becom­ing a pol­ished late-night talk show host in a few short months. And the man tasked with help­ing Louie make the tran­si­tion is none oth­er than David Lynch, play­ing the role of “Jack Dahl.” Jer­ry Sein­feld, Chris Rock, and Jay Leno all make appear­ances in this episode. But make no mis­take, it’s Lynch, the only non-come­di­an of the bunch, who pro­vides the biggest laughs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qob3FTPJ7cM

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

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Martin Scorsese Brings “Lost” Hitchcock Film to Screen in Short Faux Documentary

in Film, Television | September 18th, 2012

Alfred Hitch­cock fans should enjoy this 2007 com­mer­cial by Mar­tin Scors­ese. It was com­mis­sioned by the Cata­lan sparkling wine mak­er Freix­enet for the com­pa­ny’s annu­al Christ­mas cam­paign, with the con­cept of mak­ing a short film that would some­how weave the Freix­enet brand into the plot. Scors­ese respond­ed with a nine-minute homage to the mas­ter of sus­pense.  “Hitch­cock is one of my guid­ing lights,” he told El País at the film’s Decem­ber 2007 pre­mier in Madrid. “It’s a satire of my own movie mania. It has to do with my love of cin­e­ma, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of pos­sess­ing it.”

The com­mer­cial is struc­tured as a faux doc­u­men­tary, with Scors­ese appear­ing as him­self. With amus­ing­ly frac­tured log­ic, he explains to an inter­view­er his dis­cov­ery of a three-and-a-half minute frag­ment from an unpro­duced Hitch­cock script and his obses­sion with bring­ing it to the screen. “It’s one thing to pre­serve a film that has been made,” Scors­ese says. “It’s anoth­er to pre­serve a film that has not been made.”

The “pre­served” frag­ment, The Key to Reser­va, is pre­sent­ed as a film with­in the film. Bernard Her­man­n’s omi­nous music from North By North­west sets the tone. The roman­tic leads look some­thing like Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint. Hitch­cock afi­ciana­dos will spot ref­er­ences to a num­ber of the mas­ter’s clas­sic films from the 1950s, includ­ing Rear Win­dow, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Ver­ti­go. The Key to Reser­va was filmed by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Har­ris Savides and edit­ed by Scors­ese’s long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Thel­ma Schoon­mak­er. The sto­ry is set in Carnegie Hall but the crew was unable to film there, so the his­toric con­cert hall had to be cre­at­ed dig­i­tal­ly from pho­tographs. Ben Gross­mann of The Syn­di­cate won a Gold Clio award for visu­al effects.

If you’re won­der­ing whether Hitch­cock would have been pleased by any of this, be sure to stay with the film until it’s amus­ing con­clu­sion. For more of Scors­ese pok­ing fun at his own movie mania, see our fea­ture from yes­ter­day, “Always the Direc­tor: Mar­tin Scors­ese Spoofs Him­self in Two Com­mer­cials.” And if you want to see some real Hitch­cock films, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 20 Free Alfred Hitch­cock Films Online.

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Always the Director: Martin Scorsese Spoofs Himself in Two Commercials

in Comedy, Film, Television | September 17th, 2012

Over the years, Mar­tin Scors­ese has earned a rep­u­ta­tion as a con­sum­mate film­mak­er, an obses­sive per­fec­tion­ist who lives and breathes cin­e­ma. In these two com­mer­cials the famed direc­tor moves to the front of the cam­era to make fun of his own man­ic per­fec­tion­ism.

In 2003 Scors­ese was asked to play him­self in a com­mer­cial for Amer­i­can Express (see above), which was one of the spon­sors of the Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val. In keep­ing with his rep­u­ta­tion for fas­tid­i­ous­ness, Scors­ese demand­ed to see a resume and show reel from vet­er­an com­mer­cial direc­tor Jim Jenk­ins before agree­ing to the shoot. “It’s like Kobe Bryant ask­ing for your bas­ket­ball cre­den­tials,” Jenk­ins told Ste­fano Hat­field at Adver­tis­ing Age. “What are you gonna say? I once direct­ed Tonya Hard­ing in a Fox Sports com­mer­cial?”

Scors­ese appar­ent­ly liked what he saw, because Jenk­ins was hired. The shoot took place in a Los Ange­les drug­store dur­ing a sin­gle day. “The main chal­lenge,” wrote Hat­field in his arti­cle, “was to get Mr. Scors­ese to speak as quick­ly as we all think he does. He actu­al­ly had to be coaxed into that machine-gun deliv­ery we have all come to expect of him. While it is entire­ly cred­i­ble that this per­fec­tion­ist would have his nephew stage a par­ty all over again for a bet­ter shoot, Mr. Scors­ese admit­ted that he had­n’t actu­al­ly col­lect­ed a roll of film from a drug­store for 15 years.”

Jenk­ins and Scors­ese teamed up again for a 2008 AT&T com­mer­cial that was shown in the­aters to encour­age movie-goers to silence their phones. It shows Scors­ese barg­ing into the home of a moth­er and her young son and pro­ceed­ing to direct a pri­vate phone call.  The mes­sage: “We won’t inter­rupt your phone calls. Please don’t inter­rupt our movies.” Scors­ese was orig­i­nal­ly expect­ed to direct the com­mer­cial, accord­ing to Jenk­ins, but decid­ed just to act in it. “Obvi­ous­ly he’s a nat­ur­al actor,” Jenk­ins said of Scors­ese in an inter­view with Cre­ativ­i­ty-online. “But he was ner­vous. He just want­ed it to be fun­ny. He said, ‘I can’t know if it’s fun­ny. Just make it fun­ny.’ ”

You can watch the com­mer­cial below to decide for your­self whether it’s fun­ny. And be sure to come back tomor­row, when we fea­ture an imag­i­na­tive com­mer­cial direct­ed by Scors­ese him­self.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

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

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Yeah, Baby! Deep Purple Gets Shagadelic on Playboy After Dark

in Music, Television | September 14th, 2012

This is so bad it’s good. Or maybe, as the char­ac­ter played by Tho­ra Birch dead­pans in a mem­o­rable scene in Ter­ry Zwigof­f’s film Ghost World, “This is so bad it’s gone past good and back to bad again.”

In any case once it gets going you may find it hard to resist watch­ing this clip from the Sep­tem­ber 23, 1968 episode of Hugh Hefn­er’s syn­di­cat­ed TV pro­gram Play­boy After Dark. It looks like it came straight out of an Austin Pow­ers movie. The show was chore­o­graphed to rep­re­sent the hippest, groovi­est cock­tail par­ty ever.

The musi­cal guests that night were the British rock group Deep Pur­ple, who had formed only nine months ear­li­er and were still in their orig­i­nal line­up, which fea­tured Rod Evans on vocals and Nick Sim­per on bass (both of whom left the band less than a year lat­er) along with Jon Lord on organ, Richie Black­more on gui­tar and Ian Paice on drums.

Look­ing debonair in his black tie and jack­et, Hefn­er fakes inter­est in a brief gui­tar les­son from Black­more before chat­ting awk­ward­ly with Lord (who died last month) and ask­ing the group to play their first hit, “Hush” (writ­ten and orig­i­nal­ly record­ed by Joe South, who also died recent­ly), which had just made it to the top five in the Amer­i­can pop charts around the time of the broad­cast. Says Hef: “I think it would real­ly groove the kids if you’d do that.”

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Leonard Cohen’s 1983 Musical for Canadian Television: I Am a Hotel

in Music, Television | September 10th, 2012

One of the more curi­ous pieces in Leonard Cohen’s illus­tri­ous cat­a­logue is his roman­tic half-hour musi­cal, I Am a Hotel, made for Cana­di­an tele­vi­sion in 1983. The film is essen­tial­ly a long-form music video. It was inspired by his song “The Guests,” which begins:

One by one, the guests arrive
The guests are com­ing through
The open-heart­ed many
The bro­ken-heart­ed few

The film tells the sto­ry, through music and dance, of the roman­tic yearn­ings of the hotel’s staff and guests, with Cohen appear­ing through­out the film as the detached but sym­pa­thet­ic sto­ry­teller. “It’s light enter­tain­ment,” Cohen told the Tole­do Blade in 1985. “It uses songs from my first record up through recent songs.” Those songs are:

  1. “The Guests” from the 1979 album Recent Songs.
  2. “Mem­o­ries” from the 1977 album Death of a Ladies’ Man.
  3. “The Gyp­sy’s Wife” from Recent Songs.
  4. “Chelsea Hotel #2” from the 1974 album New Skin for the Old Cer­e­mo­ny.
  5. “Suzanne” from his 1967 debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen.

I Am a Hotel was filmed at the King Edward Hotel in Toron­to over a six-day peri­od in April of 1983. It was direct­ed by Allan F. Nicholls and writ­ten by Cohen and Mark Shek­ter. The cast includ­ed ice skat­ing cham­pi­on Toller Cranston as “The Man­ag­er,” dancer and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Anne Ditch­burn as “The Gyp­sy Wife,” and Celia Fran­ca, founder of the Nation­al Bal­let of Cana­da, as “The Diva.” The film was first broad­cast in Cana­da on May 7, 1984, and although it went on to win a Gold­en Rose at the Mon­treux Inter­na­tion­al Tele­vi­sion Fes­ti­val, it has rarely been shown since. The ver­sion above is from Dutch tele­vi­sion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Leonard Cohen Reads “The Future”

The 2005 Doc­u­men­tary, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man

The 1965 Doc­u­men­tary, Ladies and Gentlemen…Mr. Leonard Cohen

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The Wire Re-Imagined as a Classic Video Role-Playing Game

in Television | September 10th, 2012

If some­one has insis­tent­ly rec­om­mend­ed that you watch the whole of The Wire, David Simon’s tele­vi­sion series of Bal­ti­more­an insti­tu­tion­al dys­func­tion, that per­son has — let’s face it — prob­a­bly been a thir­ty­ish white guy. But we thir­ty­ish white guys do have our iso­lat­ed moments of cul­tur­al astute­ness, of which, accord­ing to all the legit­i­mate crit­ics, enthus­ing over The Wire counts as one. But we also go into volup­tuous Prous­t­ian rap­tures at the sight of our favorite old video games, so you’d do well to take us with a grain of salt. The above video from Col­lege­Hu­mor, a site that knows its audi­ence, trans­pos­es the social­ly crit­i­cal, bor­der­line-nihilis­tic action of The Wire into the pix­el-inten­sive, usu­al­ly moral­ly sim­plis­tic form of a con­sole role-play­ing game from the late eight­ies or ear­ly nineties. This will make a cer­tain over­lap in the cul­tur­al Venn dia­gram quite excit­ed indeed, and no doubt pro­vide a source of strange fas­ci­na­tion to the rest.

The play­er takes the role, for the most part, of trou­bled Bal­ti­more Police Depart­ment Detec­tive Jim­my McNul­ty, whose equip­pable items include “gun,” “badge,” “whiskey,” and “hair gel.” When he elects to “fight the sys­tem,” a turn-based bat­tle launch­es, pit­ting McNul­ty against the sys­tem’s lit­er­al embod­i­ment, a pha­lanx of invin­ci­ble bureau­crats. The game ren­ders a drug deal as the kind of store you’d vis­it in The Leg­end of Zel­da. Items avail­able: “crack,” “hero­in,” and “mana potion.” One stage even turns into some­thing of a graph­ic adven­ture, where the play­er, in search of evi­dence, clicks com­mands like “inspect,” “take,” and “hit,” although every pos­si­ble action seems to result in noth­ing more than curs­ing from either McNul­ty or his part­ner Bunk More­land. Clear­ly, this video con­tains a wealth of laughs for the Wire (or vin­tage role-play­ing game) diehard. If you’ve put off get­ting into the show, per­haps the prospect of get­ting these inside jokes will con­vince you to take the plunge. And putting in a few hours with the ear­ly Final Fan­ta­sy titles won’t hurt.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wire Breaks Down The Great Gats­by, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Clas­sic Crit­i­cism of Amer­i­ca (NSFW)

The Wire as Great Vic­to­ri­an Nov­el

Bill Moy­ers with The Wire’s David Simon

The Wire: Four Sea­sons in Four Min­utes

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

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