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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

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)

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Modern Masters: Watch BBC Series Introducing the Art of Warhol, Matisse, Picasso and Dali

in Art, Television | June 18th, 2012

Mod­ern art. Like it or not, it’s had a pro­found impact on the way our world looks. As crit­ic Alas­tair Sooke explains in this four-part series from the BBC, the great art­works of the past cen­tu­ry have exert­ed an influ­ence that extends far beyond muse­um walls.

Mod­ern Mas­ters, first broad­cast in 2010 on the main­stream chan­nel BBC One, looks at the life, work, and abid­ing influ­ence of Hen­ri Matisse, Pablo Picas­so, Sal­vador Dali and Andy Warhol. “Art dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry was rad­i­cal, intox­i­cat­ing, and immense­ly influ­en­tial,” says Sooke, deputy art crit­ic of The Dai­ly Tele­graph. “Matisse, Picas­so, Dali and Warhol did­n’t just change art his­to­ry; they changed the world.”

Episode one, Andy Warhol: For a series exam­in­ing the influ­ence of 20th cen­tu­ry art through the prism of celebri­ty artists, it’s fit­ting that Sooke should begin with an artist obsessed with celebri­ty. Sooke fol­lows Warhol (see above) from his impov­er­ished child­hood in Pitts­burgh to New York City, where he strug­gled as a com­mer­cial artist before becom­ing famous as a pop artist. Along the way he shows how Warhol’s aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty now per­me­ates our cul­ture. The oth­er three episodes pro­ceed along sim­i­lar lines. Each is just under an hour long.

Episode two, Hen­ri Matisse:

Episode three, Pablo Picas­so:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU5TDkjhLNs#t=09

Episode four, Sal­vador Dali:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robert Hugh­es, Famed Art Crit­ic, Demys­ti­fies Mod­ern Art: From Cézanne to Andy Warhol

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Begin­ning of Mod­ern Art

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer, a 1963 Film That Captures the Creative Process of the Legendary Sci-Fi Author

in Literature, Television, Writing | June 14th, 2012

Sto­ry of a Writer shows all the con­tra­dic­tions the late Ray Brad­bury embod­ied: An unstop­pably curi­ous admir­er of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy who some called a “mechan­i­cal moron,” a non-dri­ver in mid­cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, an imag­in­er of the future who worked in a base­ment crowd­ed with paper files and trib­al masks. We watch the clas­sic IBM mot­to “THINK” catch the 43-year-old writer’s eye, yet we notice anoth­er sign post­ed above his type­writer: “DON’T THINK!” This half-hour tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary cap­tures that most instinc­tu­al of crafts­men in the ratio­nal genre of sci­ence fic­tion in all sorts of activ­i­ties ground­ed in his time, place, and pro­fes­sion: telling sto­ries and per­form­ing mag­ic for his daugh­ters, offer­ing guid­ance to younger writ­ers, “work­shop­ping” a piece with a cir­cle of asso­ciates in his liv­ing room, bicy­cling through town to get ideas, and tour­ing a fall­out shel­ter show­ground.

Pro­duced by David L. Wolper, best known for pro­grams like Roots, The Thorn Birds, and This is Elvis, Sto­ry of a Writer inter­weaves with these scenes from Brad­bury’s dai­ly life a jagged­ly cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of his short sto­ry “Dial Dou­ble Zero.” In it, a man receives a series of unwant­ed phone calls from what even­tu­al­ly starts to sound like the phone sys­tem itself, which has, for unex­plained rea­sons, spon­ta­neous­ly devel­oped intel­li­gence. In Brad­bury’s imag­i­na­tion, tech­nol­o­gy may do trou­bling things, but rarely malev­o­lent ones. “I’ve always been in favor of sci­ence that can pro­long and beau­ti­fy our lives,” he says in voiceover. The broad­cast even includes one of Brad­bury’s many plain­spo­ken but enthu­si­as­tic lec­tures about the craft of writ­ing, which has much in com­mon with his sim­i­lar­ly themed 2001 speech pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture. As he sums up his rec­om­men­da­tions to aspi­rants con­cerned about the qual­i­ty of their work: “It does­n’t have to be the great­est. It does have to be you.”

You can find Ray Brad­bury: Sto­ry of a Writer list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Beginning of Modern Art

in Art, Television | June 13th, 2012

We like to think of Vin­cent van Gogh as the arche­typ­al tor­tured artist. While per­haps he fits the bill, there’s more to the sto­ry, and this episode of Pow­er of Art (above) takes pains to fill out the Dutch painter’s char­ac­ter. He did­n’t slice off his entire ear, we learn — just part of it. And while he did indeed enjoy his peaks of cre­ativ­i­ty between ago­niz­ing “spasms of crazi­ness,” he expe­ri­enced both as an “insa­tiable book­worm” fueled by a deep-seat­ed reli­gious dri­ve. All this infor­ma­tion comes from the mouth of his­to­ri­an Simon Schama, author of pop­u­lar books and host of tele­vi­sion pro­grams includ­ing Land­scape and Mem­o­ry, Rem­brandt’s Eyes, and this par­tic­u­lar video’s source, Pow­er of Art. The series enters the world of eight artists through eight paint­ings. Van Gogh’s 1890 Wheat­field with Crows, accord­ing to Schama, marks the start of mod­ern art.

Two per­son­al­i­ties take us through the sto­ry of paint­ing and painter: Schama and van Gogh him­self, por­trayed in dra­mat­ic scenes that come between sec­tions of Schama’s nar­ra­tion. The pro­gram does­n’t keep these two time frames strict­ly sep­a­rate: while we hear Schama describe van Gogh’s pecu­liar­ly ener­getic use of the brush, we also hear the brush itself, loud­ly and clear­ly, as we watch van Gogh wield it. (Pow­er of Art’s sound design shows an uncom­mon atten­tion to detail.) Lat­er, we see van Gogh lament the episodes of insan­i­ty that have him eat­ing dirt off the floor. Cut to Schama: “It’s worse, actu­al­ly.” A har­row­ing extend­ed shot fol­lows of the painter eat­ing his paint. Nev­er has tele­vi­sion taught art his­to­ry quite so dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

All episodes of The Pow­er of Art are avail­able on YouTube. It’s also avail­able in one tidy col­lec­tion on Ama­zon:

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Art His­to­ry Web Book

Robert Hugh­es, Famed Art Crit­ic, Demys­ti­fies Mod­ern Art: From Cézanne to Andy Warhol

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Young Robert De Niro Appears in 1969 AMC Car Commercial

in Film, Television | June 12th, 2012

In 1969, Robert De Niro had­n’t yet land­ed a major film role. (That would come four years lat­er.) So, like many young actors, he did com­mer­cials, includ­ing this fine one. Not much is known about this spot, oth­er than De Niro, then 26 years old, gives a hammed up pitch for the 1969 Ambas­sador, a boat of a car made by the Amer­i­can Motors Cor­po­ra­tion, a com­pa­ny once run by George Rom­ney, father of Mitt.

Enjoy the video, and when you’re done, don’t miss the addi­tion­al footage. You’ll get more young actors and actress­es doing com­mer­cials dur­ing their sal­ad days.

Far­rah Faw­cett — Union 76 (1972)
Dustin Hoff­man — Volk­swag­on (1966)
Kim Basinger — Bright Side Sham­poo (1972)
Lind­say Wag­n­er — Twice as Nice Sham­poo (1967)
John Tra­vol­ta — US Army (1973)
Cybill Shep­herd — Cov­er Girl (1969)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

William F. Buckley Meets (Possibly Drunk) Jack Kerouac, Tries to Make Sense of Hippies, 1968

in History, Literature, Television | May 30th, 2012

The first mod­ern use of the word hip­pie can be traced back to 1965, when Michael Fal­lon, a San Fran­cis­co jour­nal­ist, used the word to refer to the bohemi­an lifestyle emerg­ing in the city’s Haight-Ash­bury dis­trict. (Appar­ent­ly, Fal­lon took the word hip­ster used by Nor­man Mail­er and then short­ened it into hip­pie.) By 1967, the mass media could­n’t stop talk­ing about hip­pies. It was the Sum­mer of Love in San Fran­cis­co, the defin­ing moment of the coun­ter­cul­ture, and the rest of the coun­try was scratch­ing its col­lec­tive head, try­ing to make sense of it all. Who bet­ter to do it than William F. Buck­ley, the emerg­ing voice of con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­ca?

In this clas­sic 1968 episode of Fir­ing Line, Buck­ley tries to demys­ti­fy the hip­pie move­ment with the help of three guests: Lewis Yablon­sky, a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy and crim­i­nol­o­gy at Cal State-North­ridge; Ed Sanders, the activist poet who helped form The Fugs; and then Jack Ker­ouac, author of the Beat clas­sic, On the Road. In many ways, Ker­ouac inspired the hip­pie move­ment. And he, him­self, acknowl­edges the rela­tion­ship between the Beats and the hip­pies. But, in watch­ing this clip, one thing becomes clear: in style and sub­stance, he and the hip­pies were also worlds apart.…

Don’t miss Yale’s lec­ture on Ker­ouac and On the Road here.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

William F. Buck­ley Flogged Him­self to Get Through Atlas Shrugged

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast