Katharine Hepburn Rearranges the Furniture on The Dick Cavett Show

in Film, Television | January 8th, 2012

Ear­li­er this week, we brought you Audrey Hepburn’s Screen Test for Roman Hol­i­day (1953). Next up, we have Katharine Hep­burn appear­ing on the very 70s set of The Dick Cavett Show. In case you’re won­der­ing, the two Hep­burns were only dis­tant­ly relat­ed. Accord­ing to Salon, they shared one com­mon ances­tor, James Hep­burn, Earl of Both­well, the third hus­band of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Any­way, here’s the back­sto­ry on the Cavett inter­view that aired on Sep­tem­ber 14, 1973:

Hep­burn rarely grant­ed inter­views, and when she did, she want­ed them under her terms. When she agreed to appear on the Dick Cavett Show they went in the stu­dio a day ear­ly so she could get the feel of things. They end­ed up doing the inter­view right then and there, with­out an audi­ence.

Watch a clip of the actu­al inter­view here.

In the past, we have fea­tured Cavet­t’s inter­views with Ing­mar Bergman, Woody Allen, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, and George Har­ri­son. And don’t for­get this feud between Nor­man Mail­er and Gore Vidal. Through Ama­zon, you can also pur­chase high­lights of con­ver­sa­tions with Mar­lon Bran­do, Fred Astaire, Robert Mitchum, Orson Welles, Grou­cho Marx, Kirk Dou­glas, Bette Davis, and oth­ers. h/t Peter Kauf­man

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Young Frank Zappa Turns the Bicycle into a Musical Instrument on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

in Music, Television | January 3rd, 2012

Last week we gave you John Cage per­form­ing his avant-garde com­po­si­tion Water Walk on the CBS game show “I’ve Got a Secret” in 1960. Now, this week, we’re fol­low­ing up with a nice com­ple­ment — Frank Zap­pa bring­ing his own brand of off­beat music to the Amer­i­can air­waves in 1963. Only 22 years old and not yet famous, Zap­pa appeared on The Steve Allen Show and made music with some drum­sticks, a bass bow, and two gar­den-vari­ety bicy­cles — and noth­ing more.

The video above gives you most­ly the pre­lude to the actu­al music. Then, in the first video below, Zap­pa gives a demo of the instru­ments. Next comes the Con­cer­to for Two Bicy­cles, which fea­tures the show’s house orches­tra join­ing the cacoph­o­nous fun. The clips run a good 15 min­utes.

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:

Frank Zap­pa Gets Sur­prised & Ser­e­nad­ed by the U.S. Navy Band at the San Fran­cis­co Air­port (1980)

Ani­mat­ed: Frank Zap­pa on Why the Cul­tur­al­ly-Bereft Unit­ed States Is So Sus­cep­ti­ble to Fads (1971)

Frank Zap­pa Explains the Decline of the Music Busi­ness (1987)

Frank Zappa’s Amaz­ing Final Con­certs: Prague and Budapest, 1991

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

John Cage Performs Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

in Music, Television | December 30th, 2011

In 1952, John Cage com­posed his most con­tro­ver­sial piece, 4′33,″ a four-and-a-half minute reflec­tion on the sound of silence. Now fast for­ward eight years. It’s Feb­ru­ary, 1960, and we find the com­pos­er teach­ing his famous Exper­i­men­tal Com­po­si­tion cours­es at The New School in NYC, and pay­ing a vis­it to the CBS game show “I’ve Got a Secret.” The TV show offered Cage some­thing of a teach­able moment, a chance to intro­duce the broad­er pub­lic to his brand of avant-garde music. Cage’s piece is called Water Walk (1959), and it’s all per­formed with uncon­ven­tion­al instru­ments, save a grand piano. A water pitch­er, iron pipe, goose call, bath­tub, rub­ber duck­ie, and five unplugged radios — they all make the music. And the audi­ence does­n’t quite know how to react, except with ner­vous laugh­ter. It was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly cour­te­ous. But, as one schol­ar has not­ed, it’s equal­ly remark­able that prime time TV gave ten min­utes of unin­ter­rupt­ed air­time to avant-garde music. You take the good with the bad.

via Bib­liok­lept/WFMU

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978): It’s Oh So Kitsch

in Sci Fi, Television | December 28th, 2011

Let’s do the time warp today and revis­it the Not-S0-Gold­en Age of Amer­i­can Tele­vi­sion. The year was 1978. Star Wars fever still gripped Amer­i­ca, and the Vari­ety Show TV for­mat would­n’t say die. So, pro­duc­ing The Star Wars Hol­i­day Spe­cial was a no-brain­er. The two-hour show takes you inside the domes­tic world of Chew­bac­ca and his fam­i­ly — his father Itchy, his wife Mal­la, and his son Lumpy — and fea­tures guest appear­ances by Jef­fer­son Star­ship, Har­vey Kor­man and Bea Arthur, plus a lit­tle stock footage of Alec Guin­ness. As for the pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty and spe­cial effects? They’re all text­book kitsch.

You’ve heard enough to know that this was­n’t the finest hour for the Star Wars fran­chise. One crit­ic called it the “the worst two hours of tele­vi­sion ever.” And, when he’s will­ing to acknowl­edge the exis­tence of the TV spe­cial, George Lucas read­i­ly admits that turn­ing Star Wars into a vari­ety show “was­n’t the smartest thing to do.” But because the show only aired once in its entire­ty, the hol­i­day spe­cial has gained some­thing of a cult sta­tus and cir­cu­lates “under­ground” on the web. Van­i­ty Fair has more on this mis­ad­ven­ture in tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming here. H/T goes to Dan­ger­ous Minds.

Relat­ed Star Wars Good­ies:

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars the Musi­cal: The Force is Strong in this One

Darth Vader’s Theme in the Style of Beethoven

Kurt Rus­sell Audi­tions for Star Wars

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Incredible Mental Math Gymnastics on “Countdown”

in Math, Television | December 14th, 2011

Count­down is a British TV game show revolv­ing around words and num­bers. In the num­bers round, con­tes­tants select six of twen­ty-four shuf­fled tiles with num­bers on them. Next, a com­put­er gen­er­ates a ran­dom three-dig­it tar­get num­ber and the con­tes­tants have thir­ty sec­onds to get as close to that num­ber as pos­si­ble by com­bin­ing the six num­bers through addi­tion, sub­trac­tion, mul­ti­pli­ca­tion and divi­sion. This mem­o­rable episode of Count­down aired in March 1997 and starred James Mar­tin and his rather unusu­al way of arriv­ing at the tar­get num­ber of 952.

One YouTube user sug­gest­ed a dif­fer­ent way: 6 x 75 = 450; 450 ÷ 50 = 9; 100 + 3 = 103; 9 x 103 = 927; 927 + 25 = 952

I found yet anoth­er way: 100 + 3 = 103; 103 x 6 = 618; 618 x 75 = 46,350; 46,350 ÷ 50 = 927; 927 + 25 = 952

What about you? Any more sug­ges­tions?

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Math Cours­es

Math­e­mat­ics in Movies: Har­vard Prof Curates 150+ Scenes

Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion: The Vedic Way

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Spike Jonze’s Imaginative TV Ads

in Film, Television | December 13th, 2011

Spike Jonze has made a name for him­self as a wild­ly inven­tive direc­tor of music videos and fea­ture films, like Being John Malkovich and Adap­ta­tion. He has also cre­at­ed some of the most dis­tinc­tive tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials of the past decade. Today we bring you a few of his great­est hits.

In late 2002 Jonze cre­at­ed a stir with his IKEA com­mer­cial, “Lamp” (above). The 60-sec­ond spot went on to win the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions Inter­na­tion­al Adver­tis­ing Fes­ti­val. Boards mag­a­zine list­ed “Lamp” as one of the top 10 com­mer­cials of the decade, writ­ing:

Spike Jonze’s incred­i­bly human direct­ing touch cre­at­ed a believ­able ten­der­ness between a woman and her new Ikea light­ing, elic­it­ing pure empa­thy for a lone­ly, dis­card­ed object, left to suf­fer curb­side in the rain, and then shat­tered it all with one bril­liant stroke of cast­ing that abrupt­ly and brusque­ly brought us all back to real­i­ty.

Jonze’s star­tling Gap com­mer­cial, “Dust,” (above) became a YouTube sen­sa­tion imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing its release in 2005, but the com­pa­ny pulled the 90-sec­ond ad after test­ing it in only a few cities. Per­haps the spec­ta­cle of a cor­po­rate brand exu­ber­ant­ly doing vio­lence to its image was a bit too much for the boys in the board­room. The deci­sion to shelve the ad made the com­pa­ny look even less hip than before. As Seth Steven­son wrote in Slate, “I just can’t under­stand spend­ing all that mon­ey on a big-name direc­tor, and a big-bud­get shoot, and then frit­ter­ing the results away on such a lim­it­ed pur­pose. Did Gap not see the pos­si­bil­i­ties? Were they too scared to go for broke?”

Anoth­er ground-break­ing Jonze com­mer­cial from 2005, “Hel­lo Tomor­row,” (above) was made to intro­duce a self-adjust­ing, “intel­li­gent” sneak­er from Adi­das. The spot uses spe­cial effects to cre­ate the impres­sion of a lucid dream. The music was cre­at­ed by Jonze’s broth­er, Sam “Squeak E. Clean” Spiegel (Jonze’s birth name is Adam Spiegel) and sung by his girl­friend at the time, Karen O of the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The ad received many awards, includ­ing two Gold Lions at Cannes. The sneak­er was dropped by Adi­das in 2006, but the com­mer­cial lives on.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

The Rolling Stones Sing Jingle for Rice Krispies Commercial (1964)

in Music, Television | November 10th, 2011

Kel­log­g’s first start­ed mar­ket­ing Rice Krispies way back in 1928, and, ever since, we’ve grown accus­tomed to whole­some adver­tis­ing cam­paigns that fea­ture the car­toon mas­cots Snap, Crack­le and Pop. (See ad from 1939.) For a brief moment in 1964, all of this whole­some­ness was put aside when the J. Wal­ter Thomp­son ad agency worked with the Rolling Stones to cre­ate a hip­per, more inspired jin­gle. The result­ing com­mer­cial aired briefly only in the UK…

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!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Kim Kardashian Gets Divorced; Salman Rushdie Writes Limerick

in Literature, Poetry, Television | November 3rd, 2011

Per­haps you know the back­sto­ry; per­haps you don’t. This week, socialite and real­i­ty “star” Kim Kar­dashi­an announced that her 72-day mar­riage to Kris Humphries will end in divorce. In response, the tabloids buzzed … and famed author Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Chil­dren, The Satan­ic Vers­es and The Moor’s Last Sigh) took to Twit­ter and offered up a nice lit­tle lim­er­ick. It starts with the blue sec­tion and moves up the page…

Fol­low the author at @SalmanRushdie, and us at @openculture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Salman Rushdie on Machiavelli’s Bad Rap

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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