Jon Stewart’s William & Mary Commencement Address: The Entire World is an Elective

in Comedy, Graduation Speech, Life, Television | July 4th, 2012

In 1984, Jon Stew­art grad­u­at­ed from The Col­lege of William & Mary. In 1999, he began host­ing Com­e­dy Cen­tral’s news pro­gram The Dai­ly Show. In 2004, he returned to his alma mater, immea­sur­ably more influ­en­tial than he’d left it, to give its com­mence­ment address. Despite a dat­ed crack or two — this was the hey­day of George W. Bush, the Pres­i­dent who arguably gave Stew­art’s Dai­ly Show per­sona both its foil and rai­son d’être — the speech’s core remains sound. You, Stew­art tells the massed grad­u­ates, have the pow­er to become the next “great­est gen­er­a­tion,” though the chance appears espe­cial­ly clear and present because of how the last gen­er­a­tion “broke” the world. “It just kind of  got away from us,” he half-jokes, his grin com­pressed by seri­ous­ness. That admis­sion fol­lows a stream of self-dep­re­ca­tion hit­ting every­thing from his ten­den­cy toward pro­fan­i­ty to his unusu­al­ly large head as an under­grad­u­ate to how his pres­ence onstage deval­ues William & Mary’s very rep­u­ta­tion.

Whether or not you find the world bro­ken, or whether or not you believe that a gen­er­a­tion could break or fix it, Stew­art still packs a num­ber of worth­while obser­va­tions about the place into fif­teen min­utes. He per­haps deliv­ers his most valu­able words to these excit­ed, anx­ious school-leavers when he con­trasts the world to the aca­d­e­m­ic envi­ron­ment they’ve just left: “There is no core cur­ricu­lum. The entire place is an elec­tive.” Stew­art com­mu­ni­cates, as many com­mence­ment speak­ers try to but few do so clear­ly, that you can’t plan your way direct­ly to suc­cess in life, what­ev­er “suc­cess” might mean to you. He cer­tain­ly did­n’t. “If you had been to William and Mary while I was here and found out that I would be the com­mence­ment speak­er 20 years lat­er, you would be some­what sur­prised,” he admits. “And prob­a­bly some­what angry.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

Jon Stew­art: Teach­ers Have it Too Good (Wink)

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

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

 

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Andy Griffith (1926–2012) Gives a Lesson on the American Revolution

in History, Television | July 4th, 2012

As we roll into the 4th of July hol­i­day, let’s take a nos­tal­gic look back at Andy Grif­fith as he tells the sto­ry of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion on his clas­sic 1960s TV pro­gram, “The Andy Grif­fith Show.” Grif­fith died Tues­day at the age of 86. In the eight years “The Andy Grif­fith Show” was broadcast–from 1960 to 1968–Griffith was a humane and ratio­nal pres­ence in Amer­i­can homes. His char­ac­ter, Sher­iff Andy Tay­lor, was sur­round­ed by eccentrics yet always man­aged to keep things in per­spec­tive, embody­ing what the show’s pro­duc­er, Aaron Ruben, once described as “this Lin­col­nesque char­ac­ter.” It’s a fit­ting phrase, and a good way to remem­ber Grif­fith as we enjoy the hol­i­day.

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Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí in Classic 1968 Braniff Commercials: ‘When You Got It, Flaunt It!’

in Art, Business, Television | July 3rd, 2012


One of the scari­est things about air trav­el is the seat­ing assign­ment. You nev­er know who you’ll end up next to. This clas­sic 1968 adver­tis­ing cam­paign from Bran­iff Inter­na­tion­al Air­ways lets you imag­ine what it would be like to find your­self elbow-to-elbow with Andy Warhol and Sal­vador Dalí.

In the com­mer­cial above, Warhol tries to explain the inher­ent beau­ty of Cam­bel­l’s Soup cans to heavy­weight box­er Son­ny Lis­ton. Below, Dalí and major league base­ball pitch­er Whitey Ford com­pare notes on the knuck­le­ball ver­sus the screw­ball. The com­mer­cials were part of Bran­if­f’s ambi­tious “End of the Plain Plane” rebrand­ing cam­paign, which com­plete­ly revamped the com­pa­ny’s stodgy image. Adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive Mary Wells Lawrence hired archi­tect and tex­tile design­er Alexan­der Girard to redesign every­thing from air­plane fuse­lages to ash trays. Ital­ian fash­ion design­er Emilio Puc­ci cre­at­ed flam­boy­ant uni­forms for the stew­ardess­es, or “Bran­iff girls.” And in 1968 Lawrence brought in art direc­tor George Lois to over­see the “When You Got It, Flaunt It!” adver­tis­ing cam­paign for print and tele­vi­sion.

Lois lat­er said he came up with the slo­gan before the celebri­ties were cast. In addi­tion to the Warhol/Liston and Dalí/Ford pair­ings, the cam­paign includ­ed ads with anoth­er odd cou­ple: pulp writer Mick­ey Spillane and poet Mar­i­anne Moore. In an inter­view with the New York Dai­ly News ear­li­er this year, Lois remem­bered that Warhol had trou­ble with his lines. “Andy had to say, ‘When you got it, flaunt it.’ But I end­ed up hav­ing to dub his voice. Lat­er, after I sent him a copy of all the com­mer­cials, he told me that he said the line bet­ter than any­body.” The ads were a prod­uct of Lois’s gut-instinct approach to adver­tis­ing. “Those ads,” he said in anoth­er inter­view, “would have total­ly bombed in ad tests. As things turned out, it tripled their busi­ness.”

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William Shatner Sings O Canada (and Happy Canada Day)

in Television | July 1st, 2012

There’s some­thing time­less about William Shat­ner. The man hard­ly looks his age — 81 — though syn­thet­ic enhance­ments prob­a­bly have some­thing to do with it. And he has­n’t lost his gift for shtick. Back in the 1960s, Shat­ner began talk-singing his way through var­i­ous songs. Per­haps you’ll recall his ren­di­tion of “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” record­ed in 1968, which we recent­ly fea­tured on our list of The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs Ever. A good four decades lat­er, the tra­di­tion con­tin­ues. For Cana­da Day, eh, we have the Shat recit­ing the nation­al anthem, O Cana­da, is his inim­itable way. The clip was record­ed in 2011 when Canada’s Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al gave Shat­ner a Life­time Achieve­ment Award. Thanks to Denise for the tip.

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Alfred Hitchcock Presents a Chilling Tale by Roald Dahl (1960)

in Literature, Television | June 27th, 2012

“Good evening, ladies and gen­tle­men.” From 1955 to 1962, Alfred Hitch­cock greet­ed view­ers to his week­ly series Alfred Hitch­cock Presents with some ver­sion of this phrase, in his unmis­tak­able Eng­lish drawl. After the icon­ic intro­duc­to­ry sequence fea­tur­ing Hitch­cock step­ping into a caricature—drawn by himself—of his jow­ly pro­file, the vet­er­an direc­tor intro­duced the audi­ence to the week’s episode with a droll mono­logue writ­ten by long­time TV writer James B. Allardice, in which Hitch­cock would poke fun at him­self, the view­ers, and the show’s spon­sors. In addi­tion to Allardice, Hitchcock’s series relied on the tal­ents of sev­er­al well-known writ­ers, includ­ing lit­er­ary names like John Cheev­er, Robert Bloch (author of Psy­cho), and, most famous­ly, the much-loved Roald Dahl.

Pri­mar­i­ly known for his whim­si­cal, and often quite dark, children’s books (James and the Giant Peach, Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox), Dahl was also a nov­el­ist, screen­writer, and a writer of macabre short sto­ries for adults (he won three Edgars, or mys­tery writer awards). In 1958, Alfred Hitch­cock Presents adapt­ed Dahl’s sto­ry “Lamb to the Slaugh­ter.” And, two years lat­er in 1960, Dahl’s sto­ry “Man from the South” pro­vid­ed the basis for AHP’s most pop­u­lar episode (above). The episode stars Steven McQueen as a young man talked into a gris­ly wager by a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure named Car­los, played by Peter Lorre. “Man from the South” was adapt­ed sev­er­al more times in the fol­low­ing years: in 1979 by Dahl him­self in a tele­vi­sion series called Tales of the Unex­pect­ed, again in the 1985 revival of AHP (star­ring John Hus­ton as Car­los), and in 1995 as the basis for Quentin Tarantino’s seg­ment in the film Four Rooms. With­out a doubt, how­ev­er, this orig­i­nal adap­ta­tion of Dahl’s sto­ry remains the most mem­o­rable and haunt­ing.

J. David Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent 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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Dick Cavett’s Epic Woodstock Festival Show (August, 1969)

in Music, Television | June 27th, 2012


Even if you nev­er tuned in back then, you need only watch a few famous clips of Dick Cavett in action to under­stand why he earned the rep­u­ta­tion of run­ning the first major Amer­i­can talk show that qual­i­fied as “cool,” “smart,” or “hip.” His oper­a­tion show­cased some of the most impor­tant ele­ments of late-six­ties and sev­en­ties Amer­i­ca, those that the oth­er talk shows tend­ed to ignore, mis­rep­re­sent, or sim­ply mis­un­der­stand. Cavett him­self embod­ied a sen­si­bil­i­ty, nei­ther strict­ly friv­o­lous nor strict­ly high-toned, that allowed him the widest pos­si­ble cul­tur­al range. “The idea that one man could be both play­ful and seri­ous was nev­er deemed to be quite nat­ur­al on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion, and Cavett was regard­ed as some­thing of a freak even at the time,” wrote crit­ic and Cavett guest Clive James. “Even­tu­al­ly he paid the penal­ty for being sui gener­is in a medi­um that likes its cat­e­gories to be clear­ly marked.” For an idea of what that posi­tion enabled, just watch Cavet­t’s musi­cal guests: he had Frank Zap­pa, he had John Lennon, he had Janis Joplin for her final inter­view.

And then we have the “Wood­stock episode.” Aired on August 16, 1969, the day after the fes­ti­val, but taped mere hours after the last notes rang out in Bethel, it brought Cavett togeth­er with Jef­fer­son Air­plane, David Cros­by, Stephen Stills, and Joni Mitchell. (Jimi Hen­drix, though sched­uled to show up, played long at the fes­ti­val and wound up too “zonked” to appear on tele­vi­sion.) Specif­i­cal­ly, it brought them togeth­er on a strik­ing­ly elab­o­rate, aggres­sive­ly col­or­ful one-off set that seat­ed host and guests on a cir­cle of what look like Nau­gahyde marsh­mal­lows. What­ev­er the aes­thet­ic trans­gres­sions of this broad­cast’s design, they lead to more than one mem­o­rable moment in talk-show his­to­ry, as when Cavett tears off in frus­tra­tion the tacky scarf his staff insist­ed he tie on for the occa­sion. Pull up the Wood­stock episode on YouTube for the per­for­mances — Mitchel­l’s “Chelsea Morn­ing” and Jef­fer­son Air­plane’s “Some­body to Love” fea­tur­ing Cros­by, to name two — but stay for the con­ver­sa­tion, espe­cial­ly the part when Cavett responds to Grace Slick call­ing him “Jim” one time too many: “You’ve got to learn my name, Miss Joplin!”

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the Dick Cavett Show

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

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Johnny Depp Recites ‘Chorus 113’ from Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues

in Poetry, Television | June 27th, 2012

In 1995 John­ny Depp made a cameo appear­ance on an improb­a­ble TV mini-series called The Unit­ed States of Poet­ry. The series was broad­cast on PBS and fea­tured high­ly styl­ized vignettes spot­light­ing a range of poets–Joseph Brod­sky, Derek Wal­cott, Czes­law Milosz and Allen Gins­berg to name but a few–along with some famous names bet­ter known for their work in oth­er fields–Lou Reed,  Leonard Cohen, Jim­my Carter–in six fast-mov­ing episodes, each tied to a theme. Depp appeared in “Show Five: The Word” to read from a poem by one of his own idols, Jack Ker­ouac.

In the scene above, Depp reads a selec­tion from Ker­ouac’s 1959 book of impro­vi­sa­tion­al verse, Mex­i­co City Blues: 242 Cho­rus­es. “I want to be con­sid­ered a jazz poet,” Ker­ouac writes in the intro­duc­tion to the book, “blow­ing a long blues in an after­noon jam ses­sion on Sun­day. I take 242 cho­rus­es; my ideas vary and some­times roll from cho­rus to cho­rus or from halfway through a cho­rus to halfway into the next.” Here’s the cho­rus Depp reads from:

Cho­rus 113

Got up and dressed up
         and went out & got laid
Then died and got buried
         in a cof­fin in the grave,
Man–
         Yet every­thing is per­fect,
Because it is emp­ty,
Because it is per­fect
         with empti­ness,
Because it’s not even hap­pen­ing.

Every­thing
Is Igno­rant of its own empti­ness–
Anger
Does­n’t like to be remind­ed of fits–

You start with the Teach­ing
         Inscrutable of the Dia­mond
And end with it, your goal
         is your start­ing­place,
No race has run, no walk
         of prophet­ic toe­nails
Across Ara­bies of hot
         meaning–you just
         numbly don’t get there

For more on John­ny Dep­p’s lit­er­ary inter­ests and Jack Ker­ouac’s lit­er­ary great­ness you can explore the Open Cul­ture archives, begin­ning with:

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Jack Ker­ouac reads from On the Road (1959)

 

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Woody Allen Lives the “Delicious Life” in Early-80s Japanese Commercials

in Television | June 25th, 2012

Some­times I think the only real advan­tage of Amer­i­can celebri­ty would be the offers to act in Japan­ese tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured James Brown pitch­ing Nissin noo­dles, Har­ri­son Ford’s Japan­ese-speak­ing spots for Kirin Beer remain beloved pop-cul­tur­al arti­facts, and evi­dent­ly Jodie Fos­ter sends cos­met­ics and cof­fee fly­ing off the shelves. Sofia Cop­po­la even built her film Lost in Trans­la­tion around a Hol­ly­wood actor, por­trayed with unfor­get­table res­ig­na­tion by Bill Mur­ray, vis­it­ing Tokyo to shoot a Sun­to­ry Whisky ad. Above you’ll find a series of com­mer­cials from the ear­ly eight­ies for the Japan­ese depart­ment store Seibu, fea­tur­ing none oth­er than Woody Allen. He arranges his desk, paints cal­lig­ra­phy, winc­ing­ly receives some kind of mox­i­bus­tion treat­ment, and makes a pur­chase from a vend­ing machine embla­zoned with a pic­ture of him­self, all while a singer (as far as my lim­it­ed Japan­ese allows me to under­stand) rat­tles off a list of durable and edi­ble goods.

When these spots first aired, many Japan­ese view­ers did­n’t rec­og­nize Allen. Accord­ing to a con­tem­po­rary Lake­land Ledger arti­cle, Seibu’s mar­keters planned it that way, intend­ing to intro­duce him to Japan them­selves as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of their sen­si­bil­i­ty : “Respond­ing to the decline in the youth mar­ket, Seibu want­ed the store rep­re­sent­ed by ‘an adult’ [ … ] With his mul­ti­ple tal­ents, Mr. Allen seemed ide­al to per­son­i­fy Seibu’s mul­ti­ple fea­tures.” In each of these clips, Allen presents (and the singer sings) the Japan­ese phrase “おいしい生活,” which I read as “deli­cious life,” which the Ledger arti­cle trans­lates as “taste­ful life,” and which one YouTube com­menter trans­lates as “deli­cious lifestyle.” (“The sweet life” might con­vey a sim­i­lar idea.) For evi­dence of this cam­paign’s cul­tur­al impact, look no fur­ther than Japan’s title for the Woody Allen film, released near­ly twen­ty years lat­er, that we know as Small Time Crooks: おいしい生活. Woody, you’ve done Lon­don, you’ve done Barcelona, you’ve done Paris, you’ve done Rome — has­n’t the time come to take your cam­era to Tokyo?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Best Japan­ese Com­mer­cial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup

Woody Allen on The Dick Cavett Show Cir­ca 1970

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

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

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