“The Autobiography of Jane Eyre” Adapts Brontë’s Heroine for Vlogs, Tumblr, Twitter & Instagram

in K-12, Literature, Media | September 10th, 2013

Lest you remain unaware, Jane Eyre has a vlog. And though I would fain speak well of it, the truth must out. I pre­fer my Jane with bon­net strings knot­ted firm­ly beneath her chin. This Jane, as embod­ied by project co-cre­ator, Alysson Hall, often seems like a fan putting togeth­er a home­made audi­tion tape for Girls.

I sus­pect that’s the demo­graph­ic most like­ly to appre­ci­ate Char­lotte Bron­të’s rein­vent­ed hero­ine.  Like The Lizzie Ben­net Diaries, a self-declared “online mod­ern­ized adap­ta­tion” of Pride and Prej­u­dice, The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Jane Eyre takes a trans­me­dia approach, seri­al­iz­ing across mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal plat­forms.

In addi­tion to the YouTube chan­nel, Jane tweets to over 1500 fol­low­ers, and uploads pho­tos to Insta­gram. Her video diary might not be my cup of tea, but I must con­fess, I do rather enjoy her tum­blr. Per­haps not as much as I’d enjoy reread­ing the nov­el (find it in our col­lec­tion Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions), but it’s not a bad way to while away a minute or two.

Put anoth­er way, any­one who likes read­ing Bron­të is prob­a­bly amenable to pic­tures of tea cups, dead trees, and Tim Bur­ton’s ani­mat­ed dolls.

Jane’s embrace of social media is shared by many in her orbit, includ­ing Mr. Rochester’s employ­ee, Grace Poole, and his 8‑year-old daugh­ter, Adele, whose (ille­gal) Twit­ter feed will appeal to any pre­co­cious lit­tle smar­ty­pants eager for ran­dom facts regard­ing Bernese Moun­tain Dogs and Uranus’ moons.

The veil is lift­ed some­what on the series’ Face­book page, where the cre­ators inter­act with fans out-of-char­ac­ter and address mod­ern tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, such as soft­ware issues and audio glitch­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Books Peo­ple Pre­tend to Read (and Now Your Con­fes­sions?)

Bron­të Sis­ters Pow­er Dolls

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

Ayun Hal­l­i­day was gob­s­macked to learn that her sec­ond book, No Touch Mon­key!  has been made avail­able in ebook form.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The 10 Greatest Films of All Time According to 846 Film Critics

in Film | September 7th, 2013

We’ve recent­ly fea­tured the all-time-great­est-film-selec­tions from such cel­e­brat­ed direc­tors as Stan­ley Kubrick, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Woody Allen, and Quentin Taran­ti­no. Some of these lists came from the grand poll put on last year by Sight & Sound, the British Film Insti­tute’s well-respect­ed cin­e­ma jour­nal. While scru­ti­niz­ing the vot­ing records in the direc­tors’ divi­sion yields no small plea­sure for the cinephile, to focus too close­ly on that would ignore the big pic­ture. By that, I mean the over­all stand­ings in this most painstak­ing crit­i­cal effort to deter­mine “the Great­est Films of All Time”:

1. Ver­ti­go (Alfred Hitch­cock, 1958)
2. Cit­i­zen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
3. Tokyo Sto­ry (Yasu­jirô Ozu, 1953)
4. La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939)
5. Sun­rise (F.W. Mur­nau, 1927)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stan­ley Kubrick, 1968)
7. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
8. Man with a Movie Cam­era (Dzi­ga Ver­tov, 1929)
9. The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Drey­er, 1928)
10. 8½ (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, 1963)

These results came out with a bang — the sound, of course, of Ver­ti­go dis­plac­ing Cit­i­zen Kane. How many who watched the young Orson Welles’ debut dur­ing its finan­cial­ly inaus­pi­cious orig­i­nal run could have guessed it would one day stand as a byword for the height of cin­e­mat­ic crafts­man­ship?

But Cit­i­zen Kane just flopped, draw­ing a good deal of crit­i­cal acclaim even as it did so, where­as, sev­en­teen years lat­er, Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go not only flopped, but did so into a fog of mixed reviews, tum­bling uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly from there into obscu­ri­ty. Prints became scarce, and the ones Hitch­cock afi­ciona­dos could lat­er track down had seen bet­ter days. It would take a kind of obses­sion — not to men­tion a thor­ough restora­tion — to return Ver­ti­go to the zeit­geist.

We ignored Ver­ti­go at our per­il, and if we now ignore Cit­i­zen Kane because of its new sec­ond-chair sta­tus, we do that at our per­il as well. The 90-minute doc­u­men­tary, The Com­plete Cit­i­zen Kane, orig­i­nal­ly aired in 1991 as an episode of the BBC’s Are­na. It looks at Welles’ mas­ter­piece from every pos­si­ble angle, even bring­ing in New York­er crit­ic Pauline Kael, whose essay “Rais­ing Kane” took a con­tro­ver­sial anti-auteurist posi­tion about this most seem­ing­ly auteur-dri­ven of all Amer­i­can films.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Philoso­pher Slavoj Zizek Inter­prets Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go in The Pervert’s Guide to Cin­e­ma (2006)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was the Genius Behind Cit­i­zen Kane

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Synchronized, Timelapse Video Shows Train Traveling from London to Brighton in 1953, 1983 & 2013

in History, Travel | September 3rd, 2013

In 1953, the BBC filmed a train jour­ney from Lon­don to Brighton, “squeezed into just four min­utes.”  30 years lat­er, in 1983, they record­ed the same jour­ney again. And then for a third time in 2013. Above, you can watch all three jour­neys side by side. The videos are per­fect­ly in sync, which makes it par­tic­u­lar­ly easy to see what has changed — and what hasn’t — over the course of 60 years. You will see sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences in the land­marks along the routes. But the biggest con­trast? It’s the peo­ple who get off of the train at the end. Enjoy the ride.
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Raymond Chandler Denounces Strangers on a Train in Sharply-Worded Letter to Alfred Hitchcock

in Film, Letters | August 29th, 2013

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Alfred Hitch­cock, like sev­er­al oth­er of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s best-known auteurs, made some of his most wide­ly seen work by turn­ing books into movies. Or rather, he hired oth­er writ­ers to turn these books into screen­plays, which he then turned into movies — which, the way these things go, often bore lit­tle ulti­mate resem­blance to their source mate­r­i­al. In the case of his 1951 pic­ture Strangers on a Train, based upon The Tal­ent­ed Mr. Rip­ley author Patri­cia High­smith’s first nov­el of the same name, Hitch­cock burned through a few such hired hands. First he engaged Whit­field Cook, whose treat­ment bol­stered the nov­el­’s homo­erot­ic sub­text. Then he impor­tuned a series of the bright­est liv­ing lights of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture — Thorn­ton Wilder, John Stein­beck, Dashiell Ham­mett — to have a go at the full screen­play, none of whom could bring them­selves sign on to the job. Then along came the only respect­ed “name” writer who could rise — or, giv­en that many at first thought High­smith’s nov­el tawdry, sink — to the job: Philip Mar­lowe’s cre­ator, Ray­mond Chan­dler.

The Big Sleep author wrote and sub­mit­ted a first draft of Strangers on a Train. Then a sec­ond. He would hear no feed­back from the direc­tor except the mes­sage inform­ing him of his fir­ing. Hitch­cock pur­sued “Shake­speare of Hol­ly­wood” Ben Hecht to come up with the next draft, but Hecht offered his young assis­tant Czen­zi Ormonde instead. Togeth­er with Hitch­cock­’s wife and asso­ciate pro­duc­er, Ormonde com­plete­ly rewrote the script in less than three weeks. When Chan­dler lat­er got hold of the film’s final script, he sent Hitch­cock his assess­ment, as fea­tured on Let­ters of Note:

Decem­ber 6th, 1950

Dear Hitch,

In spite of your wide and gen­er­ous dis­re­gard of my com­mu­ni­ca­tions on the sub­ject of the script of Strangers on a Train and your fail­ure to make any com­ment on it, and in spite of not hav­ing heard a word from you since I began the writ­ing of the actu­al screenplay—for all of which I might say I bear no mal­ice, since this sort of pro­ce­dure seems to be part of the stan­dard Hol­ly­wood depravity—in spite of this and in spite of this extreme­ly cum­ber­some sen­tence, I feel that I should, just for the record, pass you a few com­ments on what is termed the final script. I could under­stand your find­ing fault with my script in this or that way, think­ing that such and such a scene was too long or such and such a mech­a­nism was too awk­ward. I could under­stand you chang­ing your mind about the things you specif­i­cal­ly want­ed, because some of such changes might have been imposed on you from with­out. What I can­not under­stand is your per­mit­ting a script which after all had some life and vital­i­ty to be reduced to such a flab­by mass of clichés, a group of face­less char­ac­ters, and the kind of dia­logue every screen writer is taught not to write—the kind that says every­thing twice and leaves noth­ing to be implied by the actor or the cam­era. Of course you must have had your rea­sons but, to use a phrase once coined by Max Beer­bohm, it would take a “far less bril­liant mind than mine” to guess what they were.

Regard­less of whether or not my name appears on the screen among the cred­its, I’m not afraid that any­body will think I wrote this stuff. They’ll know damn well I did­n’t. I should­n’t have mind­ed in the least if you had pro­duced a bet­ter script—believe me. I should­n’t. But if you want­ed some­thing writ­ten in skim milk, why on earth did you both­er to come to me in the first place? What a waste of mon­ey! What a waste of time! It’s no answer to say that I was well paid. Nobody can be ade­quate­ly paid for wast­ing his time.

(Signed, ‘Ray­mond Chan­dler’)

Note that Chan­dler, ever the writer, points out his own “extreme­ly cum­ber­some sen­tence” even as he sum­mons so much vit­ri­ol for what he con­sid­ers a life­less script. As a long­time res­i­dent of Los Ange­les by this point, and one who had already worked on the screen­plays for The Blue Dahlia and Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty, he knew well the pro­ce­dures of “the stan­dard Hol­ly­wood deprav­i­ty.” But noth­ing, to his mind, could excuse such “clichés,” “face­less char­ac­ters,” and dia­logue that “says every­thing twice and leaves noth­ing to be implied.” We could all, no mat­ter what sort of work we do, learn from Chan­dler’s unwa­ver­ing atten­tion to his craft, and we’d do espe­cial­ly well to bear in mind his pre­emp­tive objec­tion to the argu­ment that, hey, at least he got a big check: “Nobody can be ade­quate­ly paid for wast­ing his time.”

What­ev­er your own opin­ion on Hitch­cock, don’t for­get our col­lec­tion of 20 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online, nor, of course, our big col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

Watch Ray­mond Chandler’s Long-Unno­ticed Cameo in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty

Alfred Hitch­cock: The Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Getty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Public Domain (and There’s More to Come)

in Art, Museums | August 14th, 2013

Not long ago, I went over to the Get­ty to see the J. Paul Get­ty Trust’s Pres­i­dent and CEO James Cuno in live con­ver­sa­tion with Pico Iyer, one of his favorite writ­ers as well as one of mine. Cuno, him­self the author of books like Whose Cul­ture?: The Promise of Muse­ums and the Debate over Antiq­ui­ties and Muse­ums Mat­ter: In Praise of the Ency­clo­pe­dic Muse­um, impressed me not only with his choice of inter­locu­tors but with the open, for­ward-think­ing nature he revealed dur­ing the talk. On Mon­day, he demon­strat­ed it again by pub­lish­ing anoth­er piece of writ­ing, very brief but unde­ni­ably impor­tant: his announce­ment of the Get­ty’s Open Con­tent Pro­gram, which has just made avail­able over 4600 high-res­o­lu­tion images of the muse­um’s col­lec­tion freely avail­able in the pub­lic domain. You can down­load them, mod­i­fy them, dis­trib­ute them — do what you please with them.

“Why open con­tent? Why now?” Cuno writes. “The Get­ty was found­ed on the con­vic­tion that under­stand­ing art makes the world a bet­ter place, and shar­ing our dig­i­tal resources is the nat­ur­al exten­sion of that belief. This move is also an edu­ca­tion­al imper­a­tive. Artists, stu­dents, teach­ers, writ­ers, and count­less oth­ers rely on art­work images to learn, tell sto­ries, exchange ideas, and feed their own cre­ativ­i­ty.” If you enjoy engag­ing in any of these pur­suits — which, as an Open Cul­ture habitué‎, I assume you do — begin by brows­ing all the Open Con­tent Pro­gram’s cur­rent­ly avail­able images, or check for down­load links on indi­vid­ual Get­ty col­lec­tion pages. This post includes three images straight from the Get­ty: Rem­brandt’s The Abduc­tion of Europa, Walk­er Evans’ A Bench in the Bronx on Sun­day, and a hel­met of Chal­cid­i­an type cir­ca 350–300 B.C. Cuno promis­es many more images to come, and mate­r­i­al from oth­er sources like the Get­ty’s inter­na­tion­al field projects. He’s got my antic­i­pa­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

40,000 Art­works from 250 Muse­ums, Now View­able for Free at the Redesigned Google Art Project

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

Art.sy Rolls Out Huge Archive of Fine-Art Images and an Intel­li­gent Art Appre­ci­a­tion Guide

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Jimi Hendrix Live at Woodstock: Historic Concert Captured on Film

in Film | August 14th, 2013

By the time Jimi Hen­drix arrived onstage at the Wood­stock Fes­ti­val on the morn­ing of August 18, 1969, the crowd of near­ly 500,000 peo­ple had dwin­dled to few­er than 40,000. Much of Max Yas­gur’s farm looked des­o­late. Lit­ter was strewn every­where and — hard as it may be to imag­ine — scores of peo­ple were stream­ing out as Hen­drix played.

The fes­ti­val was billed as “3 Days of Peace & Music,” but rain and oth­er prob­lems delayed Hen­drix’s fes­ti­val-clos­ing per­for­mance until 8:30 on the morn­ing of the fourth day, a Mon­day. The peo­ple who remained were exhaust­ed and wet and just wak­ing up. As fes­ti­val orga­niz­er Michael Lang writes in The Road to Wood­stock:

The mas­sive stage was sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed com­pared to how packed it had been all week­end with musi­cians, crew, and friends. Jimi, a red scarf around his head and wear­ing a white fringed and bead­ed leather shirt, looked almost like a mys­ti­cal holy man in med­i­ta­tion. His eyes closed, his head back, he’d merged with his music, his Strat — played upside down since he’s a lefty — his mag­ic wand. Though he was sur­round­ed by his band, he pro­ject­ed the feel­ing he was all alone.

As he almost rev­er­ent­ly start­ed the nation­al anthem, the bedrag­gled audi­ence, worn out and mud­dy, moved clos­er togeth­er. Those of us who’d bare­ly slept in three days were awak­ened, exhil­a­rat­ed by Jim­i’s song. One minute he was chord­ing the well-worn melody, the next he was reen­act­ing “bombs burst­ing in air” with feed­back and dis­tor­tion. It was bril­liant. A mes­sage of joy and love of coun­try, while at the same time an under­stand­ing of all the con­flict and tur­moil that’s torn Amer­i­ca apart.

The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence had bro­ken up a few weeks ear­li­er, with the depar­ture of bassist Noel Red­ding. At the fes­ti­val, Hen­drix and drum­mer Mitch Mitchell were joined by two musi­cians Hen­drix had worked with before he was famous — bassist Bil­ly Cox and gui­tarist Lar­ry Lee — along with con­ga play­ers Juma Sul­tan and Jer­ry Velez. The group had rehearsed for less than two weeks in Hen­drix’s rent­ed house near Wood­stock. They called them­selves “Gyp­sy Sun & Rain­bows,” or “Band of Gyp­sys” for short.

Hen­drix’s psy­che­del­ic per­for­mance of “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” was immor­tal­ized in Michael Wadleigh’s Acad­e­my Award-win­ning 1970 film, Wood­stock. A two-disc DVD cap­tur­ing most of Hen­drix’s near­ly two-hour set, called Jimi Hen­drix Live at Wood­stock, was released in 1999. The 57-minute film above is an abridged ver­sion. It begins with an excerpt from “Mes­sage to Love” (the song Hen­drix opened with) played over gen­er­al scenes of the fes­ti­val. It goes on to show Hen­drix onstage, play­ing the fol­low­ing songs:

1. “Fire”
2. “Izabel­la”
3. “Red House”
4. “Jam Back at the House”
5. “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”
6. “Star-Span­gled Ban­ner”
7. “Pur­ple Haze”
8. “Wood­stock Impro­vi­sa­tion”
9. “Vil­lano­va Junc­tion”

The songs in the film are not pre­sent­ed in the order Hen­drix played them in, and some have been omit­ted. Sec­ond gui­tarist Lar­ry Lee (who can be heard solo­ing in “Jam Back at the House”) sang lead vocals on “Mas­ter­mind” and “Gyp­sy Woman/Aware of Love,” but those songs have been cut from this ver­sion. Also left out are “Span­ish Cas­tle Mag­ic,” “Hear My Train a Comin’,” “Lover Man,” “Foxy Lady,” “Step­ping Stone,” and an encore of “Hey Joe.” Despite the omis­sions, this abridged ver­sion of Jimi Hen­drix Live at Wood­stock is a fas­ci­nat­ing and enjoy­able look at one of the great moments in rock and roll his­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

See Jimi Hendrix’s First TV Appear­ance, and His Last as a Back­ing Musi­cian (1965)

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

What Prisoners Ate at Alcatraz in 1946: A Vintage Prison Menu

in Food & Drink, History | August 10th, 2013

Why would you want to escape from Alca­traz when you could eat Beef Pot Pie Anglaise for lunch on Tues­day, Baked Meat Cro­quettes on Wednes­day, and Bacon Jam­bal­aya on Sat­ur­day? On sec­ond thought, why would­n’t you want to escape.

Above, we have the actu­al menu for the meals served at Alca­traz dur­ing one week in Sep­tem­ber, 1946. (View it in a slight­ly larg­er for­mat here.) Alca­traz was, of course, a high secu­ri­ty fed­er­al prison that oper­at­ed off of the coast of San Fran­cis­co from 1933 until 1963. Some of Amer­i­ca’s more noto­ri­ous crim­i­nals spent time din­ing there — good fel­lows like Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kel­ly, Bumpy John­son, and James “Whitey” Bul­ger.

As you may know, Bul­ger is now back on tri­al in Boston. After being released from prison dur­ing the 1960s, he alleged­ly re-immersed him­self in the world of orga­nized crime, before even­tu­al­ly spend­ing 16 years liv­ing as a fugi­tive, large­ly in Cal­i­for­nia. While on the lam, he amaz­ing­ly had the chutz­pah to vis­it Alca­traz (now a tourist site) and pose for a pic­ture where he donned a striped suit and stood behind mock prison bars. I have to won­der whether he had some Puree Mon­gole for old times’ sake?

via SF Gate and Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Odd Col­lec­tion of Books in the Guan­tanamo Prison Library

See a Peru­vian Prison Seized with Dance Fever as They Try to Break a Guin­ness World Record

Phi­los­o­phy in Prison: Weighty Con­ver­sa­tions about Right and Wrong

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

10 Tips From Billy Wilder on How to Write a Good Screenplay

in Film, Writing | August 6th, 2013

There’s an old sto­ry — Orson Welles called it “the great­est Hol­ly­wood one-lin­er ever made” — that when some­one attend­ing the 1958 funer­al of Har­ry Cohn, the fear­some pres­i­dent of Colum­bia Pic­tures, asked how it was pos­si­ble that such a huge crowd would show up for Cohn’s funer­al, Bil­ly Wilder quipped: “Well, give the peo­ple what they want.”

The sto­ry is almost cer­tain­ly apoc­ryphal. The line may have been spo­ken by some­one else, at a dif­fer­ent Hol­ly­wood mogul’s funer­al. But the fact that it is so often attrib­uted to Wilder says some­thing about his rep­u­ta­tion as a man with a razor-sharp wit and a firm grasp of the imper­a­tives of pop­u­lar movie-mak­ing. In films like Sun­set Boule­vard, Some Like it Hot, Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty and Sab­ri­na, Wilder used his for­mi­da­ble craft as a direc­tor to tell sto­ries in a clear and effi­cient way. It was an eth­ic he picked up as a screen­writer.

Wilder was born in Aus­tria-Hun­gary and moved as a young man to Ger­many, where he worked as a news­pa­per reporter. In the late 1920s he began writ­ing screen­plays for the Ger­man film indus­try, but he fled the coun­try soon after Adolf Hitler became chan­cel­lor in 1933. Wilder made his way to Hol­ly­wood, where he con­tin­ued to write screen­plays. He co-wrote a num­ber of suc­cess­ful films in the 30s, includ­ing Ninotch­ka, Hold Back the Dawn and Ball of Fire. In the ear­ly 40s he got his first chance to direct a Hol­ly­wood movie, and a long string of hits fol­lowed. In 1960 he won three Acad­e­my Awards for pro­duc­ing, writ­ing and direct­ing The Apart­ment.

Wilder was 90 years old when the young direc­tor Cameron Crowe approached him in 1996 about play­ing a small role in Jer­ry Maguire. Wilder said no, but the two men formed a friend­ship. Over the next sev­er­al years they talked exten­sive­ly about film­mak­ing, and in 1999 Crowe pub­lished Con­ver­sa­tions with Wilder. One of the book’s high­lights is a list of ten screen­writ­ing tips by Wilder. “I know a lot of peo­ple that have already Xerox­ed that list and put it by their type­writer,” Crowe said in a 1999 NPR inter­view. “And, you know, there’s no bet­ter film school real­ly than lis­ten­ing to what Bil­ly Wilder says.”

Here are Wilder’s ten rules of good film­mak­ing:

1: The audi­ence is fick­le.
2: Grab ’em by the throat and nev­er let ’em go.
3: Devel­op a clean line of action for your lead­ing char­ac­ter.
4: Know where you’re going.
5: The more sub­tle and ele­gant you are in hid­ing your plot points, the bet­ter you are as a writer.
6: If you have a prob­lem with the third act, the real prob­lem is in the first act.
7: A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audi­ence add up two plus two. They’ll love you for­ev­er.
8: In doing voice-overs, be care­ful not to describe what the audi­ence already sees. Add to what they’re see­ing.
9: The event that occurs at the sec­ond act cur­tain trig­gers the end of the movie.
10: The third act must build, build, build in tem­po and action until the last event, and then — that’s it. Don’t hang around.

Note: Read­ers might also be inter­est­ed in Wilder’s 1996 Paris Review inter­view. It’s called The Art of of Screen­writ­ing.

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via Gotham Writ­ers’ Work­shop

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Watch Ray­mond Chandler’s Long-Unno­ticed Cameo in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Salvador Dalí

in Art, Film | August 6th, 2013

Just the oth­er day, I had a chat with a well-known poet who laid out for me his the­o­ry that Andy Warhol invent­ed our con­cep­tion of mod­ern Amer­i­ca. When we think about this coun­try, the poet explained, we think about this coun­try broad­ly in the way that Warhol (and thus his dis­ci­ples) envi­sioned it. We here at Open Cul­ture have cov­ered sev­er­al of the forms in which the artist pro­mul­gat­ed his dis­tinc­tive brand of Amer­i­cana, and today, for the 85th anniver­sary of his birth, we’ve round­ed up a few of his famous “screen tests,” the short films he made between 1963 and 1968 that offer por­traits of hun­dreds of fig­ures, famous and oth­er­wise, who hap­pened to pass through his studio/social club/subcultural hot zone, The Fac­to­ry. Just above, you can watch Warhol’s screen test with Nico, the Ger­man singer who would become an inte­gral part of the Fac­to­ry-formed band the Vel­vet Under­ground.

Lit­tle-heard at the time but ulti­mate­ly high­ly influ­en­tial, the Vel­vet Under­ground’s sound shaped much Amer­i­can pop­u­lar music — and giv­en pop­u­lar music’s cen­tral­i­ty back then, much of Amer­i­can cul­ture to come. You may not nec­es­sar­i­ly buy that argu­ment, but sure­ly you can’t argue against the influ­ence of a cer­tain singer-song­writer by the name of Bob Dylan, Warhol’s screen test with whom appears just above.

Com­ing from a Pol­ish immi­grant fam­i­ly, and seem­ing­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the cul­ti­va­tion of his own out­sider sta­tus his entire life, Warhol under­stood the impor­tance of for­eign­ers to the vital­i­ty of Amer­i­can cul­ture. Nat­u­ral­ly, he did­n’t miss his chance to shoot a screen test with Sal­vador Dalí, below, when the Span­ish sur­re­al­ist came to the Fac­to­ry.

See also our pre­vi­ous post on Warhol’s screen tests with Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Edie Sedg­wick, and oth­ers. When you’ve watched them all, con­sid­er con­tin­u­ing your cel­e­bra­tion of life in Andy Warhol’s 85th birth­day with the Earth­Cam and The Warhol Muse­um’s col­lab­o­ra­tion Fig­ment. It offers live cam­era feeds of not only his grave but the church where he was bap­tized. Com­par­isons to the view­ing expe­ri­ence of Empire are encour­aged.

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:

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

The film Andy Warhol: A Mir­ror of the Six­ties has been added to our list of 550 Free Movies Online.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Photos of Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, J.D. Salinger, and Virginia Woolf As Youngsters

in Literature | August 5th, 2013

Ah, the Buz­zfeed lis­ti­cle. Gawk­er’s Tom Scoc­ca recent­ly described the dread­ed online pub­lish­ing phe­nom as “aggres­sive­ly designed to ‘go viral’ with­in a spe­cif­ic micro­tar­get­ed pop­u­la­tion and to be worth­less to every oth­er read­er on the plan­et.” Maybe some­thing of an exag­ger­a­tion. Then again, it seems that “17 Things Bears Are Bet­ter at Than You” may reach a minor con­tin­gent of read­ers, and “7 Fan­tas­tic Needle­point Fash­ion Mag­a­zine Cov­ers” may indeed have lim­it­ed appeal. Of course, the lis­ti­cle pre­cedes the inter­net, and dri­ves con­tent beyond Buz­zfeed. A sta­ple of Cos­mo, it’s always been a nar­row form, except when it comes to such irre­sistible click­bait as “before they were famous” lists, such as this selec­tion of awk­ward pho­tos of TV per­son­al­i­ties.

But some­times even Buz­zfeed takes the high road. A recent spread, for instance, show­cased 24 pho­tos of famous authors as young, anony­mous men and women. Take, for exam­ple, the pic at the top of a teenage Toni Mor­ri­son (then Chloe Wof­ford) from 1949. Tak­en at Ohio’s Lor­raine High School, we see senior class trea­sur­er Mor­ri­son posed with seri­ous intent, gaz­ing at some sort of mag­a­zine with three of her class­mates. Buz­zfeed pil­fered this pho­to from anoth­er lit­er­ary lis­ti­cle, Fla­vor­wire’s “20 Famous Authors’ Adorable School Pho­tos.” Not a Mor­ri­son fan? No wor­ries. You may be enlight­ened or amused by the pho­to above, of a young Haru­ki Muraka­mi, work­ing in his Tokyo jazz bar, the Peter Cat, before writ­ing his first nov­el, Hear the Wind Sing, in 1979.

Then we have the famous recluse J.D. Salinger above, from his 1936 year­book pho­to from Val­ley Forge Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my. We learn that the future Fran­ny and Zooey author was a cor­po­ral who put in time in the glee club, the avi­a­tion and French clubs, and served as the lit­er­ary edi­tor for the year­book (called Crossed Sabres.) A copy of the year­book, signed by Salinger, went up for auc­tion last year for $2,400. Also from the Buz­zfeed list, below, (and also lift­ed from Fla­vor­wire), we have the ten­der por­trait of a 14-year-old Vir­ginia Woolf (nee Stephen—on the right), cir­ca 1896, posed with her sis­ters Stel­la and Vanes­sa (left and cen­ter).

There are sev­er­al more pho­tos float­ing around out there of famous authors as awk­ward or very intense young men and women.  They may not give us the same thrill as see­ing the lat­est hot young thing as an acne-plagued goof­ball with braces, but they pro­vide us with visu­al win­dows on the stages of our favorite writ­ers’ devel­op­ment as real peo­ple in real life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Author Flan­nery O’Connor Cap­tured on Film at Age 5, with Her Chick­ens

Writ­ers’ Hous­es Gives You a Vir­tu­al Tour of Famous Authors’ Homes

Pho­tos of Famous Writ­ers (and Rock­ers) with their Dogs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness