Tom Waits Fishing with John Lurie: ‘Like Waiting for Godot on Water’

in Television, Video - Arts & Culture | February 6th, 2012

John Lurie is a musi­cian, actor and artist. He’s also a hor­ri­ble fish­er­man.

As sax­o­phon­ist and leader of the punk-jazz group the Lounge Lizards, Lurie emerged as a cult fig­ure in New York’s down­town arts scene in the 1980s, and the deal was cement­ed with his surly, straight-faced per­for­mances in Jim Jar­musch’s Stranger Than Par­adise and Down by Law. As writer Tad Friend put it in a 2010 New York­er arti­cle, “Between Four­teenth Street and Canal–the known uni­verse, basically–he was the man.”

In 1991 Lurie ven­tured out­side that uni­verse, into the mid­dle-Amer­i­can realm of the TV fish­ing show. With back­ing from Japan­ese investors, he assem­bled a film crew and invit­ed some famous friends–Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe, Den­nis Hop­per and Matt Dillon–on a series of improb­a­ble fish­ing trips. Fish­ing with John, as the series is called, builds on the dead­pan, jour­ney-to-nowhere sen­si­bil­i­ty of Stranger than Par­adise: noth­ing much hap­pens.

But that’s the point. As a review­er for the Los Ange­les Times said, Fish­ing with John is “like Wait­ing for Godot on water.” The plea­sure is in observ­ing peo­ple so utter­ly out of their ele­ment. It’s like watch­ing Mar­lin Perkins or Curt Gowdy wan­der into a SoHo per­for­mance art hap­pen­ing.

In the episode above, Tom Waits does­n’t believe his ears when a Jamaican fish­ing guide tells him what time to get up in the morn­ing: “Five o’clock?” Waits report­ed­ly did­n’t speak to Lurie for two years after­ward. “I dun­no why I ever let you talk me into this,” he grum­bles. “It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

In addi­tion to the Waits episode, you can watch the Jim Jar­musch seg­ment online or own the entire series (six episodes, 147 min­utes) on the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion DVD, which includes com­men­tary by Lurie. And to learn about what Lurie has been up to since the series was made–his strug­gle with the neu­ro­log­i­cal effects of Lyme dis­ease, his hid­ing out from an alleged stalk­er, his new focus on painting–be sure to read Lar­son Sut­ton’s 2011 inter­view with Lurie at Jambands.com. H/T Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Tom Waits Makes Com­ic Appear­ance on Fer­n­wood Tonight (1977)

A Crash Course in World History

in History, K-12 | February 3rd, 2012

Give John Green 40 weeks, and Green will give you a play­ful and high­ly visu­al crash course in world his­to­ry, tak­ing you from the begin­ning of human civ­i­liza­tion 15,000 years ago through to our mod­ern age. If you’re not famil­iar with him, Green is a best­selling author of sev­er­al young adult books (Look­ing for Alas­ka, An Abun­dance of Kather­ines, and Paper Towns). He’s also part of the pop­u­lar vlog­broth­ers and an active Twit­ter user with more than 1.1 mil­lion fol­low­ers — that’s about 22 times what we have, to put things in per­spec­tive.

The series starts with The Agri­cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion (above) and the Indus Val­ley Civ­i­liza­tion (below). New video install­ments will be released through­out the year here. And more uni­ver­si­ty-lev­el his­to­ry cours­es can be found in our big col­lec­tion of 1,300 Free Cours­es Online.

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!

The Intelligent Channel Launches (with Colum McCann Interview)

in YouTube | February 3rd, 2012

In a new effort to estab­lish anoth­er home for intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion on the web, the Intel­li­gent Chan­nel went live on YouTube this week. Launched as part of YouTube’s new orig­i­nal chan­nels ini­tia­tive, the Intel­li­gent Chan­nel presents lumi­nar­ies from the edu­ca­tion­al, arts, and cul­tur­al worlds in intense con­ver­sa­tions.

The chan­nel will kick off with three strands of orig­i­nal video pro­gram­ming pro­duced by the channel’s par­ent com­pa­ny Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion in New York:

On “The Paul Hold­en­gräber Show,” the renowned founder, direc­tor, and host of “Live from the New York Pub­lic Library” inter­views award-win­ning writ­ers and artists about their work and oth­er pas­sions. Holdengräber’s first guest — the show pre­mieres today — is Colum McCann, author of the Nation­al Book Award-win­ning nov­el Let the Great World Spin. (You can watch the con­ver­sa­tion above.) Holdengräber’s next guest is Eliz­a­beth Gilbert, author of the best­selling Eat, Pray, Love.

In “Richard Belzer’s Con­ver­sa­tion,” the star of “Law & Order SVU” and “Homi­cide” inter­views actors, come­di­ans, direc­tors, musi­cians, and writ­ers. Belzer’s open­ing guest is come­di­an Gilbert Got­tfried, who dis­cuss­es the impli­ca­tions of com­e­dy after Sep­tem­ber 11th and in the face of tragedy more gen­er­al­ly. His next guests will include Dick Cavett and Emmy-award win­ning writer-pro­duc­er Tom Fontana.

In “Enlight­en­ment Min­utes,” the famous and the even more famous speak to the audi­ence about their moments of enlight­en­ment, per­son­al tran­scen­dence, and growth.

The Intel­li­gent Chan­nel also fea­tures the new “Ed Archive” – video, film, and oral his­to­ries from uni­ver­si­ties, muse­ums, libraries, and archives that have yet to hit the web.  “Enlight­en­ment Min­utes” and the “Ed Archive” will pre­miere in Feb­ru­ary 2012.

The Learn­ing Chan­nel has dis­ap­peared, the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel gives us less to dis­cov­er than it did, and the His­to­ry Chan­nel has hard­ly any his­to­ry any more!  The Intel­li­gent Channel’s guests come on because they love enlight­en­ment.

The Intel­li­gent Chan­nel — here’s to the con­ver­sa­tion!

Peter B. Kauf­man is founder of the Intel­li­gent Chan­nel and Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion (www.intelligenttelevision.com) in New York.

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plurabelle’ from Finnegans Wake

in Books, Literature | February 2nd, 2012

Today is the birth­day of James Joyce, who was born in Dublin on Feb­ru­ary 2, 1882, and wrote in A Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man: “Wel­come, O life! I go to encounter for the mil­lionth time the real­i­ty of expe­ri­ence and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncre­at­ed con­science of my race.”

To cel­e­brate his life, we present an August 1929 record­ing of Joyce read­ing a melo­di­ous pas­sage from the “Anna Livia Plura­belle” chap­ter of his Work in Progress, which would be pub­lished ten years lat­er as Finnegans Wake. The record­ing was made in Cam­bridge, Eng­land, at the arrange­ment of Joyce’s friend and pub­lish­er Sylvia Beach. “How beau­ti­ful the ‘Anna Livia’ record­ing is,” wrote Beach in her mem­oir, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, “and how amus­ing Joyce’s ren­der­ing of an Irish wash­er­wom­an’s brogue!”

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:

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Play­ground (1955)

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Death Masks: From Dante to James Joyce and Friedrich Niet­zsche

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Read in Celebrity Voices

in Comedy, Literature | February 2nd, 2012

Last sum­mer, actor Jim Meski­men pro­duced a viral video where he imper­son­at­ed 25 famous fig­ures recit­ing Clarence’s mono­logue from Shake­speare’s great his­to­ry play, Richard III. Woody Allen, Jack Nichol­son, Jim­my Stew­art — they all made an appear­ance.

Now, Meski­men returns with a new cast of char­ac­ters, and this time he’s read­ing lines from Marc Antony’s famous speech in Julius Cae­sar.

If you live in LA, you can see the impres­sion­ist per­form live at The Act­ing Cen­ter on Feb­ru­ary 17 & 18 at 8 p.m. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nine Imper­son­ations by Kevin Spacey in Six Min­utes

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Reads Shake­speare

William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare

A Roundup of David Lynch’s Surreal Commercials: Sony PlayStation, Calvin Klein, Georgia Coffee & More

in Film, Television | February 1st, 2012

The films of David Lynch seem any­thing but “com­mer­cial.” Dis­turb­ing, incom­pre­hen­si­ble, they shine a flash­light into the dark­est regions of the sub­con­scious mind. When you walk out of a the­ater after watch­ing a David Lynch film you feel like you just woke up from a vivid and unset­tling dream.

But Lynch has been lead­ing a dou­ble life. While mak­ing uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly artis­tic works for the movie the­aters, he has been direct­ing com­mer­cials for tele­vi­sion and oth­er media on the side. Why does he do it? “Well,” Lynch told Chris Rod­ley in Lynch on Lynch, “they’re lit­tle bit­ty films, and I always learn some­thing by doing them.”

Lynch began receiv­ing offers to make com­mer­cials after the crit­i­cal suc­cess of Blue Vel­vet in 1986. His first project was a series of four 30-sec­ond spots for Calvin Klein’s Obses­sion fra­grance in 1988, each with a pas­sage writ­ten by a famous nov­el­ist. The ad above quotes Ernest Hem­ing­way’s The Sun Also Ris­es. You can also watch com­mer­cials fea­tur­ing F. Scott Fitzger­ald and D.H. Lawrence, but the fourth one, fea­tur­ing Gus­tave Flaubert, is cur­rent­ly unavail­able.

Lynch has com­plet­ed many adver­tis­ing assign­ments over the years, always man­ag­ing to retain some­thing of his unique vision in the process. We’ve select­ed some of the most strik­ing­ly “Lynchi­an” of the com­mer­cials. Scroll down and enjoy.

When Lynch was asked a few years ago how he felt about prod­uct place­ment in movies, his video­taped answer went viral on YouTube: “Bull­shit. That’s how I feel. Total fuck­ing bull­shit.” So it’s strange to think that Lynch once agreed to place the entire fic­tion­al world of one of his most famous cre­ations, Twin Peaks, at the ser­vice of a Japan­ese cof­fee com­pa­ny. But that’s what he did in 1991, for Geor­gia Cof­fee. In Lynch on Lynch, the film­mak­er was asked whether he was con­cerned about what the com­mer­cials might do to the Twin Peaks image. “Yes,” he replied. “I’m real­ly against it in prin­ci­ple, but they were so much fun to do, and they were only run­ning in Japan and so it just felt OK.”

The four com­mer­cials, each only 30 sec­onds long, fol­low FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er (Kyle McLach­lan) as he solves the mys­tery of a miss­ing Japan­ese woman in the town of Twin Peaks, all the while man­ag­ing to enjoy plen­ty of “damn fine” Geor­gia Cof­fee. Alas, the Japan­ese com­mer­cials were not as suc­cess­ful as the Amer­i­can TV series. “We were sup­posed to do a sec­ond year, and do four more 30-sec­ond spots,” Lynch said, “but they did­n’t want to do them.”

You can watch the first episode, “Lost,” above, and fol­low the rest of the sto­ry through these links: Episode Two: “Cher­ry Pie,” Episode Three: “The Mys­tery of ‘G’ ” and Episode Four: “The Res­cue.”

In 1991 Lynch made one of the creepi­est pub­lic ser­vice mes­sages ever (above) con­cern­ing New York City’s rat prob­lem. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is by Lynch’s long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Fred­er­ick Elmes.

“Who is Gio” (above) was shot for Geor­gio Armani in Los Ange­les in ear­ly 1992, right when sev­er­al Los Ange­les police offi­cers were acquit­ted in the video­taped beat­ing of black motorist Rod­ney King–a ver­dict that sparked may­hem in the streets. “We were shoot­ing the big scene with the musi­cians and the club the night the riots broke out in LA,” Lynch told Chris Rod­ley. “Inside the club we were all races and reli­gions, get­ting along so fan­tas­ti­cal­ly, and out­side the club the world was com­ing apart.”

Of all his ear­ly adver­tis­ing clients, Lynch said, Armani gave him the most free­dom. The two-and-a-half-minute ver­sion above is an exten­sion of the orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast 60-sec­ond com­mer­cial.

One of the most bizarre of Lynch’s com­mer­cials is his 1998 con­tri­bu­tion (above) to the “Parisi­enne Peo­ple” cam­paign. The Swiss cig­a­rette mak­er Parisi­enne invit­ed famous direc­tors to make short com­mer­cials for screen­ing in movie the­aters across Switzer­land. To see how oth­ers han­dled the same assign­ment, fol­low these links: Roman Polan­s­ki, Robert Alt­man, Jean-Luc Godard (with wife Anne-Marie Miéville), Giuseppe Tor­na­tore, and Ethan and Joel Coen.

Lynch’s sur­re­al 2000 com­mer­cial for Sony Playsta­tion (above), called “The Third Place,” is wide open for inter­pre­ta­tion. Writer Greg Olson takes a hero­ic stab at it in his book, David Lynch: Beau­ti­ful Dark:

For six­ty sec­onds we pro­ceed through a labyrinth of Lynchi­an themes and motifs visu­al­ized in black and white, thus sig­ni­fy­ing the bifur­ca­tion of the world into two polar­i­ties. A man in a black suit and a white shirt encoun­ters eerie pas­sage­ways, sud­den flames, bar­ren trees, fac­to­ry smoke, a woman who won’t speak her secrets, a wound­ed fig­ure wrapped in ban­dages. The man meets his own dou­ble, and a man with a duck­’s head. A source­less voice asks, “Where are we?” The dual­is­tic duck-man, who syn­the­sizes ani­mal instinct and human learn­ing, knows: “Wel­come to the third place.”

Yes. The duck-man knows.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Debuts Lady Blue Shang­hai

David Lynch’s Organ­ic Cof­fee (Bar­bie Head Not Includ­ed)

Philip Glass Composes Music for a Sesame Street Animation (1979)

in Art, Music | February 1st, 2012

Last night, Philip Glass cel­e­brat­ed his 75th birth­day at Carnegie Hall, attend­ing the US pre­miere of his Ninth Sym­pho­ny. His long and illus­tri­ous career con­tin­ues. But today we’re bring­ing you back to 1979, when Glass wrote a com­po­si­tion to accom­pa­ny “Geom­e­try of Cir­cles,” a four-part series of ani­ma­tions that aired on the beloved chil­dren’s show Sesame Street. A strange detour for an influ­en­tial com­pos­er? Not real­ly. Not when you con­sid­er that Glass came out of a 1960s tra­di­tion that made mod­ern music more play­ful and approach­able.

And speak­ing of approach­able, don’t miss Philip Glass get­ting inter­viewed by his friend­ly cousin Ira Glass. You know Ira as the host of This Amer­i­can Life. The inter­view took place in 1999, and NPR final­ly brought it back yes­ter­day, at least for a lim­it­ed time. You can lis­ten here.

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:

Ira Glass on the Art of Sto­ry­telling

A Min­i­mal Glimpse of Philip Glass

Philip Glass & Lou Reed at Occu­py Lin­coln Cen­ter: An Art­ful View

Paul McCartney’s New Album, Kisses On The Bottom, Streaming for Free

in Music | January 31st, 2012

Kiss­es On The Bot­tom — it’s Paul McCart­ney’s 35th post-Bea­t­les album, his most provoca­tive­ly-titled album to be sure, and a great stroll down mem­o­ry lane. The album fea­tures cov­ers of jazz stan­dards, most­ly writ­ten dur­ing the 1920s and 1930s. It’s the music that McCart­ney’s father loved to play on the fam­i­ly piano, giv­ing the younger McCart­ney his first intro­duc­tion to music. Diana Krall, Ste­vie Won­der and Eric Clap­ton make guest appear­ances. The new album goes on sale next week (pre-order it here), but you can stream it for free (in its entire­ty) on NPR or via The Guardian. Lis­ten quick­ly, because the free stream will only last for a lim­it­ed time.

P.S. Leonard Cohen’s lat­est album, his first in sev­en years, is still stream­ing online too. More here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig

Three Passions of Bertrand Russell (and a Collection of Free Texts)

in Literature, Math, Philosophy | January 31st, 2012

“Three pas­sions, sim­ple but over­whelm­ing­ly strong, have gov­erned my life,” wrote Bertrand Rus­sell in the pro­logue to his auto­bi­og­ra­phy: “the long­ing for love, the search for knowl­edge, and unbear­able pity for the suf­fer­ing of mankind.”

This five minute video, a pre­view of a three-part series pro­duced in 2005 for Ontario pub­lic tele­vi­sion called “The Three Pas­sions of Bertrand Rus­sell,” fea­tures a record­ing of Rus­sell read­ing pas­sages from the pro­logue, enti­tled “What I Have Lived For.” You can read the orig­i­nal text at the Bertrand Rus­sell Soci­ety, an excel­lent online resource, that also makes avail­able free books by Rus­sell, includ­ing:

• An Essay on the Foun­da­tions of Geom­e­try (1897)
• The Prin­ci­ples of Math­e­mat­ics (1903)
• Our Knowl­edge of the Exter­nal World (1914)
• Intro­duc­tion to Math­e­mat­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy (1919)
• Mys­ti­cism and Log­ic and Oth­er Essays (1919)
• The Analy­sis of Mind (1921)
• The Con­quest of Hap­pi­ness (1930)

You can also down­load the first edi­tion of Rus­sel­l’s land­mark 1910–13 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Alfred North White­head, Prin­cip­ia Math­e­mat­i­ca, as well as many of Rus­sel­l’s essays, includ­ing:

• “A Free Man’s Wor­ship” (1903)
• “On Denot­ing” (1905)
• “The Ele­ments of Ethics” (1910)
• “The Ethics of War” (1915)
• “On Propo­si­tions” (1919)
• “The­o­ry of Knowl­edge” (1926)
• “Why I am Not a Chris­t­ian” (1927)

To explore the full list of avail­able resources, and to learn how you can sup­port the soci­ety’s activ­i­ties, vis­it the Bertrand Rus­sell Soci­ety web­site.

Also don’t miss some great Rus­sell mate­r­i­al in our own archives, includ­ing all six of his 1948 BBC Rei­th Lec­tures, a clip from a Cana­di­an tele­vi­sion inter­view fea­tur­ing his views on God, and his elo­quent 1959 mes­sage to the future.

The Muppets Strike Back at Fox!

in Comedy, Politics | January 30th, 2012

In Fox’s world, noth­ing good is ter­ri­bly safe. Even the lov­able Mup­pets fall under with­er­ing attack.

Last month, Fox Busi­ness spent sev­en min­utes (below) unrav­el­ing the left wing con­spir­a­cy in the lat­est Mup­pet movie. Then the Mup­pets, not tak­ing things lying down, struck back. Appear­ing at a press con­fer­ence in Lon­don last week, Ker­mit the Frog and Miss Pig­gy rebutted Fox’s charges in one com­ic minute. It’s a pret­ty fun­ny clip. But the best part is watch­ing a major news out­let argue with pup­pets.

If you need some­thing to make you feel bet­ter about the world, don’t miss Jim Hen­son’s 1969 primer on how to make your own pup­pets, using noth­ing oth­er than house­hold items. H/T SF Gate